1. Umberto Eco's 14 points. Nah. Fascism has to erase the line between state violence and non-state violence. It ditches the rechtsstaat. Ignoring that feature is hopeless.
2. Much of the discourse is stuck in the past. The thing today is technofascism. See smartphones and Neuralink and I could go on. See China in particular as the world's leading country in this regard.
3. On question 3 of the sweepstake, does anyone have someone who isn't Yousaf as the SNP leader when the GE is called? Brian Souter (who is homophobic) switching his backing to Kate Forbes when he realises Yousaf is finished would be interesting. It would be a dollshouse version of Elon Musk backing RFKJr.
It is clear that Davey did look into the allegations, but that the PO and Fujitsu insisted that the Horizon system didn't allow remote access and logged each entry in a separate file down to each keystroke.
We know that now not to be true, but that is Fujitsu's fault and untruth.
I think that's an answer to a different question - key presses have nothing to do with database transactions but it's unfair to expect none technical people to pick up the issue.
So Davey isn't at fault and at best Fujitsu carefully answered the question asked and not the question that was meant.
In reality I'm being very generous to Fujitsu there - they carefully answered a different question to the one that was being asked.
Saying a computer system is "robust" is meaningless. What does "robust" mean? Robust for what?
"Robust" is a word carefully chosen to mean, for the speaker, that the system runs and doesn't crash or collapse, yet to the listener, convey the impression it means "accurate".
Yes - but how daft must you be not to realise that. As I said, a lack of curiosity is very common in scandals, at least the ones I've been involved in.
An interesting piece. Examples of the graphs would have helped but I appreciate length is always an issue for a header.
What the header, and indeed the discussion BTL, show is that it is increasingly difficult and complicated to classify someone's political beliefs in a broad category that carries a coherent meaning. One point that I think hasn't been made to date is that this is the reason that political parties have also become less coherent and disciplined.
So yesterday we had a former Tory Minister Chris Skidmore resigning because he doesn't think that the government should be issuing licences for fresh exploration in the North Sea. How do you classify that? According to Wiki he was Chairman of the Bow Group and a fellow of the Policy Exchange. He has been active in Tory politics since he was a teenager and supported Truss's Free Enterprise Group. An almost classic Tory but he has resigned the Whip and may soon be to resign his seat. If you can't create a tent big enough to include people like that how do you create a government?
Holding parties together in such an atmosphere is incredibly difficult creating governments that lack coherence, stability and a sense of purpose. I think that the politician who has proven to be the best at this in recent decades was Nicola Sturgeon but look what has happened since she left the scene. The famous SNP self discipline has collapsed and dissent is rife. This simply means that the SNP have fallen to earth and are in a similar position to most political parties.
We see this in the Commons. Both parties have an exceptional number of people who have been expelled or simply chosen to leave. In Labour's case this includes the former leader. In the last Parliament we had the likes of Ken Clarke expelled. What this means for the future is that any government elected with a small majority simply will not survive. There will be too many single issue obsessives who will split away.
We need more than two parties of government. Far better is PR, where all strands of opinion can be voiced.
One reason that I have never entered party politics for election (though have been a member of Labour 1994-2003, and Lib Dems 2013-present) is that my political views are incoherent. They really do not match any political party. I am a minority of one.
I am similar and I expect an increasing majority are. I was last in a political party in about 2008 being the Lib Dems. Since then I have been broadly Conservative but deeply frustrated with much of their policies most of the time. Cameron came closest to bringing me into the fold but since then it has been much more problematic. The current government's policies on Rwanda, on HS2, on defence and on the taxation of those who work for a living have driven me to distraction. I will not be joining any political party soon.
I too was taken in by Cameron, and voted for the Conservatives in 2010. I saw the need for change, and how New Labour had become rotten in power, and was willing to take at face value that the Conservative Party had changed. It had indeed changed, but the social liberalism of Cameroonism has certainly been reversed now, replaced by a rather unpleasant streak of Culture War.
I do look back on the Coalition positively, despite some significant errors including by the Lib Dems. Indeed that was when I became active on PB.
Likewise in both respects.
I think that the Coalition was one of the best periods of government in my adult life time. Of course they made mistakes, as all governments do, but that is in the nature of things. What would we give for that level of incompetence now? It would be deeply aspirational both for the present government and the Labour opposition.
One key was the notable continuity of ministerial appointments, in large part fixed by the coalition agreement itself. There were not the frequent reshuffles and purges of the Post 2015 years on both front benches. This allowed ministers to get to real grip of what was going on.
A notable exception to ministerial continuity being the Post Office responsibility, and we see now how that is part of why it dragged on so long.
An interesting piece. Examples of the graphs would have helped but I appreciate length is always an issue for a header.
What the header, and indeed the discussion BTL, show is that it is increasingly difficult and complicated to classify someone's political beliefs in a broad category that carries a coherent meaning. One point that I think hasn't been made to date is that this is the reason that political parties have also become less coherent and disciplined.
So yesterday we had a former Tory Minister Chris Skidmore resigning because he doesn't think that the government should be issuing licences for fresh exploration in the North Sea. How do you classify that? According to Wiki he was Chairman of the Bow Group and a fellow of the Policy Exchange. He has been active in Tory politics since he was a teenager and supported Truss's Free Enterprise Group. An almost classic Tory but he has resigned the Whip and may soon be to resign his seat. If you can't create a tent big enough to include people like that how do you create a government?
Holding parties together in such an atmosphere is incredibly difficult creating governments that lack coherence, stability and a sense of purpose. I think that the politician who has proven to be the best at this in recent decades was Nicola Sturgeon but look what has happened since she left the scene. The famous SNP self discipline has collapsed and dissent is rife. This simply means that the SNP have fallen to earth and are in a similar position to most political parties.
We see this in the Commons. Both parties have an exceptional number of people who have been expelled or simply chosen to leave. In Labour's case this includes the former leader. In the last Parliament we had the likes of Ken Clarke expelled. What this means for the future is that any government elected with a small majority simply will not survive. There will be too many single issue obsessives who will split away.
We need more than two parties of government. Far better is PR, where all strands of opinion can be voiced.
One reason that I have never entered party politics for election (though have been a member of Labour 1994-2003, and Lib Dems 2013-present) is that my political views are incoherent. They really do not match any political party. I am a minority of one.
I am similar and I expect an increasing majority are. I was last in a political party in about 2008 being the Lib Dems. Since then I have been broadly Conservative but deeply frustrated with much of their policies most of the time. Cameron came closest to bringing me into the fold but since then it has been much more problematic. The current government's policies on Rwanda, on HS2, on defence and on the taxation of those who work for a living have driven me to distraction. I will not be joining any political party soon.
What gets me is we have a plan for growth and yet HS2 which would end up being a national backbone infrastructure project is penny pinched to death.
Previously Manchester is expected to have viaducts to bring the trains in while Italy & France go - hmm this train isn't as fast as it could be let's tunnel under the city and build a new station for Bologna (and now Florence, Marseille).
We'll ignore the Dutch and American approach that keeping trains on platforms is a waste of resources so let's extend HS2 to say Croydon and terminate the trains somewhere cheaper (which is what Amsterdam and New York are doing the equivalent of).
The penny pinching of HS2 was an extreme example of the incapability of our political classes to commit to long term structural projects essential for growth, not in this Parliament (which is their entire focus) but the one after and the one after that. I see no evidence that Labour are going to be any better at this.
Thing is, it wasn’t just penny pinching. Part of the problem with HS2 was the opposite, gold plating a project, going for maximum high spec everything - 600kph trains with diamond tipped ticket collectors
if you’ve ever watched an LNER Azuma train race through Luton without stopping you will notice they go REALLY fast, certainly fast enough for a country as small and compact as the UK. 125mph. We don’t actually NEED more than that, do we?
It occurs to me we should just have built more of those and relabelled them “high speed”. Job done for a third the price
The problem with HS2 is that the Government refused to accept risk but was very happy to let every possible risk be included within the project plan..
The other problem is when you look at the projects I mentioned above all of them are self contained projects at maximum 2 junctions, a tunnel, a station and some track.
But the cost of Euston is because it's actually multiple different projects: - it's rebuild the underground (a project that was previously attached to CrossRail 2) connect Euston Square to euston (again an TfL / Crossrail 2 project) and add 10 400m long platforms in an area of very expensive real estate.
Now the reality is that every part of that is required for HS2 when it's fully finished but all those projects could be being done separately - it's just in the UK they are all attached to the total HS2 pot where elsewhere in the world a large part of them would be in a separate "Make Euston the Gateway to the UK" project.
It is clear that Davey did look into the allegations, but that the PO and Fujitsu insisted that the Horizon system didn't allow remote access and logged each entry in a separate file down to each keystroke.
We know that now not to be true, but that is Fujitsu's fault and untruth.
I think that's an answer to a different question - key presses have nothing to do with database transactions but it's unfair to expect none technical people to pick up the issue.
So Davey isn't at fault and at best Fujitsu carefully answered the question asked and not the question that was meant.
In reality I'm being very generous to Fujitsu there - they carefully answered a different question to the one that was being asked.
Saying a computer system is "robust" is meaningless. What does "robust" mean? Robust for what?
A software system may work very well for purpose A but not for purpose B. What error logs were there? What internal audit reports on it were there? What quality assurance was done? Etc. I am no IT expert but these questions are not hard to ask and even less so if you take advice from those who do understand these matters.
The other obvious questions to have asked are: who does the investigation into the discrepancies? What are their qualifications for doing so? How do they check that this is not caused by software or other faults? What quality assurance is done on their reports? Are these reports disclosed to the defendants during the prosecutions as they are legally obliged to be? And so on.
There was a basic lack of curiosity.
The balloon really should have gone up when Second Sight reported that they were being denied access to the documents they were promised. That was a red flag. Then when they were sacked just before their second report came out. That was another one.
Fair play to you @Cyclefree for banging this drum. Even from far away in Bangkok - ah, sweet Bangkok, as the sun sets - I can see that the Post Office scandal has finally surfaced, and is roiling the seas of social media, and - belatedly - achieved national salience
Likewise @Peter_the_Punter and @IanB2 and everyone else who has jangled this tambourine. It now resounds
It STILL bores the moobs off me, but that is absolutely my fault for being easily bored by post offices. I shall watch the ITV drama tonight (which has clearly shifted everything); hopefully I will feel some empathy - and curiosity
Thanks.
I am interested professionally. But also because my own profession - not just lawyers but lawyers who do investigations - have behaved so abysmally. This shames me. I know what it is needed to do good investigations, to run a really effective investigations team, to manage the internal and external stakeholders, to gain the confidence and trust and respect of those you deal with etc., and to see the total lack of professionalism and any sense of ethical underpinning displayed in this case over such a long period and the utter shamelessness of those involved, even when faced with the human consequences of what they have done, really pains - and infuriates - me.
If it helps, think of it as a lot of creative types in Soho persecuted by some rogue AI and lying lawyers.
Indeed, and as I say, bravo for being a terrier with a rat, on this
As an occasional scribbler for the Gazette, I am now compelled by this, not coz I newly care about subpostmasters, but because i am fascinated to see how the scriptwriter of this ITV show took such a complex and yawning story and made it morally urgent and national news. Because he or see has clearly done a superb job, and will surely win prizes
After watching it I hope and expect to be as passionate as you about this. Well, nearly
1. Umberto Eco's 14 points. Nah. Fascism has to erase the line between state violence and non-state violence. It ditches the rechtsstaat. Ignoring that feature is hopeless.
2. Much of the discourse is stuck in the past. The thing today is technofascism. See smartphones and Neuralink and I could go on. See China in particular as the world's leading country in this regard.
3. On question 3 of the sweepstake, does anyone have someone who isn't Yousaf as the SNP leader when the GE is called? Brian Souter (who is homophobic) switching his backing to Kate Forbes when he realises Yousaf is finished would be interesting. It would be a dollshouse version of Elon Musk backing RFKJr.
I think Yousef will be toast shortly, but not until after the GE.
I have always found politicalcompass to be designed to give most people a left-leaning outcome (including myself), so I've always assumed it to be an example of simple left-wing electoral propaganda. Possibly it isn't; possibly that's just the way that the people who created it think. It is very hard to look at political classifications when almost everyone doing the classifying has a political perusasion that they'd like to promote. Everyone wants to move centre point in their own direction and portray their opponents as 'extreme' or 'far' something. The left seems to have been very successful in doing this, despite their apparent absence from the governance of the UK for so long. Listening to Any Questions in the car, hearing the QT audience clap like seals as the policy of encouraging domestic oil and gas production was attacked showed how far you can move the window of acceptibility if you're determined.
I read on the previous thread that some sort of huge SNPbadness was about to break.
Well?
You are in Scotland. Nip down to the newsagent and tell us if they did "hold the front page" or if some PBer fell for a social media hoax and a photoshopped newspaper.
Buy a newspaper? Along with most of the population, I’m done with that caveman jive daddy oh.
Never underestimate the capacity of the average Yoon to whip themselves into a conspiracy fuelled frenzy.
I am getting visions of a TV crew finding 'the average Scot' - Perhaps called Glen and hailing from Dunfermline, and handing him a big cheque for £10,000 courtesy of independence.
Shockingly reductive to limit it to Scots. Just imagine the size of the cheques handed out to each English person once they no longer need to subsidise 'shithole' Scotland!
I read on the previous thread that some sort of huge SNPbadness was about to break.
Well?
You are in Scotland. Nip down to the newsagent and tell us if they did "hold the front page" or if some PBer fell for a social media hoax and a photoshopped newspaper.
I missed that last night, but guess the most credulous person on the planet has been 'had', again?
An interesting piece. Examples of the graphs would have helped but I appreciate length is always an issue for a header.
What the header, and indeed the discussion BTL, show is that it is increasingly difficult and complicated to classify someone's political beliefs in a broad category that carries a coherent meaning. One point that I think hasn't been made to date is that this is the reason that political parties have also become less coherent and disciplined.
So yesterday we had a former Tory Minister Chris Skidmore resigning because he doesn't think that the government should be issuing licences for fresh exploration in the North Sea. How do you classify that? According to Wiki he was Chairman of the Bow Group and a fellow of the Policy Exchange. He has been active in Tory politics since he was a teenager and supported Truss's Free Enterprise Group. An almost classic Tory but he has resigned the Whip and may soon be to resign his seat. If you can't create a tent big enough to include people like that how do you create a government?
Holding parties together in such an atmosphere is incredibly difficult creating governments that lack coherence, stability and a sense of purpose. I think that the politician who has proven to be the best at this in recent decades was Nicola Sturgeon but look what has happened since she left the scene. The famous SNP self discipline has collapsed and dissent is rife. This simply means that the SNP have fallen to earth and are in a similar position to most political parties.
We see this in the Commons. Both parties have an exceptional number of people who have been expelled or simply chosen to leave. In Labour's case this includes the former leader. In the last Parliament we had the likes of Ken Clarke expelled. What this means for the future is that any government elected with a small majority simply will not survive. There will be too many single issue obsessives who will split away.
We need more than two parties of government. Far better is PR, where all strands of opinion can be voiced.
One reason that I have never entered party politics for election (though have been a member of Labour 1994-2003, and Lib Dems 2013-present) is that my political views are incoherent. They really do not match any political party. I am a minority of one.
So, ideally, are we looking at 67,736,802 parties?
Anyone who can persuade their mum to vote for them, would be off to a flyer
Very good post. Made me smile. Worthy of multiple likes. However @Foxy is accurate. For me my nearest fit is an Orange Book LD, but I find a good fit with Social Democrats (they don't scare me), although some of my views on freedoms of the individual and business would be considered to be well to the right of most conservatives and other views would be considered quite socialist (eg education)
It is clear that Davey did look into the allegations, but that the PO and Fujitsu insisted that the Horizon system didn't allow remote access and logged each entry in a separate file down to each keystroke.
We know that now not to be true, but that is Fujitsu's fault and untruth.
I think that's an answer to a different question - key presses have nothing to do with database transactions but it's unfair to expect none technical people to pick up the issue.
So Davey isn't at fault and at best Fujitsu carefully answered the question asked and not the question that was meant.
In reality I'm being very generous to Fujitsu there - they carefully answered a different question to the one that was being asked.
Saying a computer system is "robust" is meaningless. What does "robust" mean? Robust for what?
A software system may work very well for purpose A but not for purpose B. What error logs were there? What internal audit reports on it were there? What quality assurance was done? Etc. I am no IT expert but these questions are not hard to ask and even less so if you take advice from those who do understand these matters.
The other obvious questions to have asked are: who does the investigation into the discrepancies? What are their qualifications for doing so? How do they check that this is not caused by software or other faults? What quality assurance is done on their reports? Are these reports disclosed to the defendants during the prosecutions as they are legally obliged to be? And so on.
There was a basic lack of curiosity.
The balloon really should have gone up when Second Sight reported that they were being denied access to the documents they were promised. That was a red flag. Then when they were sacked just before their second report came out. That was another one.
Fair play to you @Cyclefree for banging this drum. Even from far away in Bangkok - ah, sweet Bangkok, as the sun sets - I can see that the Post Office scandal has finally surfaced, and is roiling the seas of social media, and - belatedly - achieved national salience
I've got to fly into Bangkok tomorrow for four days, before catching a flight to Palowan. I really don't like the former, which is a polluted, crowded, noisy dump.
Still, it just about beats London in January I suppose.
Donald J. Trump’s escalating attacks on Nikki Haley both on the airwaves and at his rallies — criticisms she likened Saturday to “a temper tantrum” — captured the turbulent dynamics in the final week before the first votes of the 2024 Republican presidential primary are cast.
Mr. Trump, Ms. Haley and Ron DeSantis fanned out across Iowa this weekend to make their case before the state’s caucuses on Jan. 15 in a frenetic burst of activity as voters endured an unending barrage of mailers, TV ads and door knockers.
I read on the previous thread that some sort of huge SNPbadness was about to break.
Well?
You are in Scotland. Nip down to the newsagent and tell us if they did "hold the front page" or if some PBer fell for a social media hoax and a photoshopped newspaper.
Buy a newspaper? Along with most of the population, I’m done with that caveman jive daddy oh.
Never underestimate the capacity of the average Yoon to whip themselves into a conspiracy fuelled frenzy.
I am getting visions of a TV crew finding 'the average Scot' - Perhaps called Glen and hailing from Dunfermline, and handing him a big cheque for £10,000 courtesy of independence.
Shockingly reductive to limit it to Scots. Just imagine the size of the cheques handed out to each English person once they no longer need to subsidise 'shithole' Scotland!
English person "Citizen of rump Britain", surely? Even "person in England" would be better.
It is clear that Davey did look into the allegations, but that the PO and Fujitsu insisted that the Horizon system didn't allow remote access and logged each entry in a separate file down to each keystroke.
We know that now not to be true, but that is Fujitsu's fault and untruth.
I think that's an answer to a different question - key presses have nothing to do with database transactions but it's unfair to expect none technical people to pick up the issue.
So Davey isn't at fault and at best Fujitsu carefully answered the question asked and not the question that was meant.
In reality I'm being very generous to Fujitsu there - they carefully answered a different question to the one that was being asked.
Saying a computer system is "robust" is meaningless. What does "robust" mean? Robust for what?
A software system may work very well for purpose A but not for purpose B. What error logs were there? What internal audit reports on it were there? What quality assurance was done? Etc. I am no IT expert but these questions are not hard to ask and even less so if you take advice from those who do understand these matters.
The other obvious questions to have asked are: who does the investigation into the discrepancies? What are their qualifications for doing so? How do they check that this is not caused by software or other faults? What quality assurance is done on their reports? Are these reports disclosed to the defendants during the prosecutions as they are legally obliged to be? And so on.
There was a basic lack of curiosity.
The balloon really should have gone up when Second Sight reported that they were being denied access to the documents they were promised. That was a red flag. Then when they were sacked just before their second report came out. That was another one.
Fair play to you @Cyclefree for banging this drum. Even from far away in Bangkok - ah, sweet Bangkok, as the sun sets - I can see that the Post Office scandal has finally surfaced, and is roiling the seas of social media, and - belatedly - achieved national salience
I've got to fly into Bangkok tomorrow for four days, before catching a flight to Palowan. I really don't like the former, which is a polluted, crowded, noisy dump.
Still, it just about beats London in January I suppose.
Yes, it definitely beats London in January
You’ll be pleased to hear the pollution is way down this winter, so far. Perhaps they have stopped burning rice fields in the provinces (which causes the smog you can get at this time of year)
The key to enjoying Bangkok is to pick your area, and never leave it. Never get in a taxi (apart from to and from the airport). Never get into traffic. Choose somewhere with loads of nice restaurants, hotels, shops, open air beer bars, everything within a ten minute walk (and there are several of these areas) and then stay there. Then it is blissfully relaxed
I read on the previous thread that some sort of huge SNPbadness was about to break.
Well?
Embargoed until this morning. It's 11.02am.
But the front page upon which this inverted pyramid of piffle appears to be based is out in the wild, informing its dwindling number of readers.
Still, it enabled you to shoe-horn “Scotland” into a PB conversation, a feat which becomes increasingly difficult as Sindy drifts off into the silent void of Not Actually Happening, like some NASA probe sadly passing beyond Pluto
I read on the previous thread that some sort of huge SNPbadness was about to break.
Well?
Embargoed until this morning. It's 11.02am.
But the front page upon which this inverted pyramid of piffle appears to be based is out in the wild, informing its dwindling number of readers.
Still, it enabled you to shoe-horn “Scotland” into a PB conversation, a feat which becomes increasingly difficult as Sindy drifts off into the silent void of Not Actually Happening, like some NASA probe sadly passing beyond Pluto
Much as I love your posts @Leon were you aware of the irony of that post?
I read on the previous thread that some sort of huge SNPbadness was about to break.
Well?
Embargoed until this morning. It's 11.02am.
But the front page upon which this inverted pyramid of piffle appears to be based is out in the wild, informing its dwindling number of readers.
Still, it enabled you to shoe-horn “Scotland” into a PB conversation, a feat which becomes increasingly difficult as Sindy drifts off into the silent void of Not Actually Happening, like some NASA probe sadly passing beyond Pluto
Much as I love your posts @Leon were you aware of the irony of that post?
Note the consistency with his claiming that there is no need for high speed trains in the UK becvause he has been to Luton and all.
I read on the previous thread that some sort of huge SNPbadness was about to break.
Well?
Embargoed until this morning. It's 11.02am.
But the front page upon which this inverted pyramid of piffle appears to be based is out in the wild, informing its dwindling number of readers.
Also, interesting to see that people think that even existing high speed trains are unnecessaru for the UK.
Of course, if one believes that there is little in the UK north of Watford, never mind Watford Gap, it follows logically.
But some of us in Scotland would have liked to be able to travel to the rest of Europe at high speed, preferably bypassing London completely.
Well, for that you will need an economy and a population big enough so that it justifies the expense of laying track across the bleak midge-infested wilds of Scotland to reach, er, Cumbernauld
Under the SNP you will never get the bustling economy, pray that global warming gives you a bigger population
I read on the previous thread that some sort of huge SNPbadness was about to break.
Well?
Embargoed until this morning. It's 11.02am.
But the front page upon which this inverted pyramid of piffle appears to be based is out in the wild, informing its dwindling number of readers.
Also, interesting to see that people think that even existing high speed trains are unnecessaru for the UK.
Of course, if one believes that there is little in the UK north of Watford, never mind Watford Gap, it follows logically.
But some of us in Scotland would have liked to be able to travel to the rest of Europe at high speed, preferably bypassing London completely.
Well, for that you will need an economy and a population big enough so that it justifies the expense of laying track across the bleak midge-infested wilds of Scotland to reach, er, Cumbernauld
Under the SNP you will never get the bustling economy, pray that global warming gives you a bigger population
It's not the bits between York and Edinburgh that are the problem. It's the bits in middle and southern England that are the problem. All the more so now.
It is clear that Davey did look into the allegations, but that the PO and Fujitsu insisted that the Horizon system didn't allow remote access and logged each entry in a separate file down to each keystroke.
We know that now not to be true, but that is Fujitsu's fault and untruth.
I think that's an answer to a different question - key presses have nothing to do with database transactions but it's unfair to expect none technical people to pick up the issue.
So Davey isn't at fault and at best Fujitsu carefully answered the question asked and not the question that was meant.
In reality I'm being very generous to Fujitsu there - they carefully answered a different question to the one that was being asked.
Saying a computer system is "robust" is meaningless. What does "robust" mean? Robust for what?
A software system may work very well for purpose A but not for purpose B. What error logs were there? What internal audit reports on it were there? What quality assurance was done? Etc. I am no IT expert but these questions are not hard to ask and even less so if you take advice from those who do understand these matters.
The other obvious questions to have asked are: who does the investigation into the discrepancies? What are their qualifications for doing so? How do they check that this is not caused by software or other faults? What quality assurance is done on their reports? Are these reports disclosed to the defendants during the prosecutions as they are legally obliged to be? And so on.
There was a basic lack of curiosity.
The balloon really should have gone up when Second Sight reported that they were being denied access to the documents they were promised. That was a red flag. Then when they were sacked just before their second report came out. That was another one.
Fair play to you @Cyclefree for banging this drum. Even from far away in Bangkok - ah, sweet Bangkok, as the sun sets - I can see that the Post Office scandal has finally surfaced, and is roiling the seas of social media, and - belatedly - achieved national salience
Likewise @Peter_the_Punter and @IanB2 and everyone else who has jangled this tambourine. It now resounds
It STILL bores the moobs off me, but that is absolutely my fault for being easily bored by post offices. I shall watch the ITV drama tonight (which has clearly shifted everything); hopefully I will feel some empathy - and curiosity
Thanks.
I am interested professionally. But also because my own profession - not just lawyers but lawyers who do investigations - have behaved so abysmally. This shames me. I know what it is needed to do good investigations, to run a really effective investigations team, to manage the internal and external stakeholders, to gain the confidence and trust and respect of those you deal with etc., and to see the total lack of professionalism and any sense of ethical underpinning displayed in this case over such a long period and the utter shamelessness of those involved, even when faced with the human consequences of what they have done, really pains - and infuriates - me.
If it helps, think of it as a lot of creative types in Soho persecuted by some rogue AI and lying lawyers.
Indeed, and as I say, bravo for being a terrier with a rat, on this
As an occasional scribbler for the Gazette, I am now compelled by this, not coz I newly care about subpostmasters, but because i am fascinated to see how the scriptwriter of this ITV show took such a complex and yawning story and made it morally urgent and national news. Because he or see has clearly done a superb job, and will surely win prizes
After watching it I hope and expect to be as passionate as you about this. Well, nearly
The scriptwriter is Gwyneth Hughes - an ex-journalist.
She also adapted Vanity Fair for ITV a few years ago and did it really well, I thought. Plus Honour - about the "honour"-based murder of an Asian girl. She seems to specialise in turning real-life cases into dramas to make them come alive.
It is clear that Davey did look into the allegations, but that the PO and Fujitsu insisted that the Horizon system didn't allow remote access and logged each entry in a separate file down to each keystroke.
We know that now not to be true, but that is Fujitsu's fault and untruth.
I think that's an answer to a different question - key presses have nothing to do with database transactions but it's unfair to expect none technical people to pick up the issue.
So Davey isn't at fault and at best Fujitsu carefully answered the question asked and not the question that was meant.
In reality I'm being very generous to Fujitsu there - they carefully answered a different question to the one that was being asked.
Saying a computer system is "robust" is meaningless. What does "robust" mean? Robust for what?
A software system may work very well for purpose A but not for purpose B. What error logs were there? What internal audit reports on it were there? What quality assurance was done? Etc. I am no IT expert but these questions are not hard to ask and even less so if you take advice from those who do understand these matters.
The other obvious questions to have asked are: who does the investigation into the discrepancies? What are their qualifications for doing so? How do they check that this is not caused by software or other faults? What quality assurance is done on their reports? Are these reports disclosed to the defendants during the prosecutions as they are legally obliged to be? And so on.
There was a basic lack of curiosity.
The balloon really should have gone up when Second Sight reported that they were being denied access to the documents they were promised. That was a red flag. Then when they were sacked just before their second report came out. That was another one.
Fair play to you @Cyclefree for banging this drum. Even from far away in Bangkok - ah, sweet Bangkok, as the sun sets - I can see that the Post Office scandal has finally surfaced, and is roiling the seas of social media, and - belatedly - achieved national salience
I've got to fly into Bangkok tomorrow for four days, before catching a flight to Palowan. I really don't like the former, which is a polluted, crowded, noisy dump.
Still, it just about beats London in January I suppose.
Yes, it definitely beats London in January
You’ll be pleased to hear the pollution is way down this winter, so far. Perhaps they have stopped burning rice fields in the provinces (which causes the smog you can get at this time of year)
The key to enjoying Bangkok is to pick your area, and never leave it. Never get in a taxi (apart from to and from the airport). Never get into traffic. Choose somewhere with loads of nice restaurants, hotels, shops, open air beer bars, everything within a ten minute walk (and there are several of these areas) and then stay there. Then it is blissfully relaxed
if you have to move around a lot it is grim
I'll try that, but there are still many better places in Thailand. I've had a fun two weeks on the islands and mainland beaches in the south. That's the best of Thailand to me - Ko Lipe, Ko Lanta, Ao Nang, Railay, etc.
Maybe I'll see you in some bar or restaurant or something.
And if you overhear a Thatcherite comment in an English accent, it's probably me.
I read on the previous thread that some sort of huge SNPbadness was about to break.
Well?
Embargoed until this morning. It's 11.02am.
But the front page upon which this inverted pyramid of piffle appears to be based is out in the wild, informing its dwindling number of readers.
Still, it enabled you to shoe-horn “Scotland” into a PB conversation, a feat which becomes increasingly difficult as Sindy drifts off into the silent void of Not Actually Happening, like some NASA probe sadly passing beyond Pluto
Much as I love your posts @Leon were you aware of the irony of that post?
Of course, which is why I said it
I am the Official PB Shoe-horn-master General, and Lord Lieutenant of the Honourable Company of Thread-Hijackers; as such I acknowledge a fellow member of the Guild
It is clear that Davey did look into the allegations, but that the PO and Fujitsu insisted that the Horizon system didn't allow remote access and logged each entry in a separate file down to each keystroke.
We know that now not to be true, but that is Fujitsu's fault and untruth.
I think that's an answer to a different question - key presses have nothing to do with database transactions but it's unfair to expect none technical people to pick up the issue.
So Davey isn't at fault and at best Fujitsu carefully answered the question asked and not the question that was meant.
In reality I'm being very generous to Fujitsu there - they carefully answered a different question to the one that was being asked.
Saying a computer system is "robust" is meaningless. What does "robust" mean? Robust for what?
A software system may work very well for purpose A but not for purpose B. What error logs were there? What internal audit reports on it were there? What quality assurance was done? Etc. I am no IT expert but these questions are not hard to ask and even less so if you take advice from those who do understand these matters.
The other obvious questions to have asked are: who does the investigation into the discrepancies? What are their qualifications for doing so? How do they check that this is not caused by software or other faults? What quality assurance is done on their reports? Are these reports disclosed to the defendants during the prosecutions as they are legally obliged to be? And so on.
There was a basic lack of curiosity.
The balloon really should have gone up when Second Sight reported that they were being denied access to the documents they were promised. That was a red flag. Then when they were sacked just before their second report came out. That was another one.
Fair play to you @Cyclefree for banging this drum. Even from far away in Bangkok - ah, sweet Bangkok, as the sun sets - I can see that the Post Office scandal has finally surfaced, and is roiling the seas of social media, and - belatedly - achieved national salience
I've got to fly into Bangkok tomorrow for four days, before catching a flight to Palowan. I really don't like the former, which is a polluted, crowded, noisy dump.
Still, it just about beats London in January I suppose.
Yes, it definitely beats London in January
You’ll be pleased to hear the pollution is way down this winter, so far. Perhaps they have stopped burning rice fields in the provinces (which causes the smog you can get at this time of year)
The key to enjoying Bangkok is to pick your area, and never leave it. Never get in a taxi (apart from to and from the airport). Never get into traffic. Choose somewhere with loads of nice restaurants, hotels, shops, open air beer bars, everything within a ten minute walk (and there are several of these areas) and then stay there. Then it is blissfully relaxed
if you have to move around a lot it is grim
I'll try that, but there are still many better places in Thailand. I've had a fun two weeks on the islands and mainland beaches in the south. That's the best of Thailand to me - Ko Lipe, Ko Lanta, Ao Nang, Railay, etc.
Maybe I'll see you in some bar or restaurant or something.
Stay around Sois 2 to 22 on Sukhumvit Road, or in the old Patpong (if you like trendy gay areas). They have all you need
You may actually see me in the airport tomorrow: I am flying to my new favourite city for a Gazette assignment: Phnom Penh
Speaking of which, the Thai islands are very nice, but a little overdeveloped these days? Try Cambodia
It is clear that Davey did look into the allegations, but that the PO and Fujitsu insisted that the Horizon system didn't allow remote access and logged each entry in a separate file down to each keystroke.
We know that now not to be true, but that is Fujitsu's fault and untruth.
I think that's an answer to a different question - key presses have nothing to do with database transactions but it's unfair to expect none technical people to pick up the issue.
So Davey isn't at fault and at best Fujitsu carefully answered the question asked and not the question that was meant.
In reality I'm being very generous to Fujitsu there - they carefully answered a different question to the one that was being asked.
Saying a computer system is "robust" is meaningless. What does "robust" mean? Robust for what?
A software system may work very well for purpose A but not for purpose B. What error logs were there? What internal audit reports on it were there? What quality assurance was done? Etc. I am no IT expert but these questions are not hard to ask and even less so if you take advice from those who do understand these matters.
The other obvious questions to have asked are: who does the investigation into the discrepancies? What are their qualifications for doing so? How do they check that this is not caused by software or other faults? What quality assurance is done on their reports? Are these reports disclosed to the defendants during the prosecutions as they are legally obliged to be? And so on.
There was a basic lack of curiosity.
The balloon really should have gone up when Second Sight reported that they were being denied access to the documents they were promised. That was a red flag. Then when they were sacked just before their second report came out. That was another one.
Fair play to you @Cyclefree for banging this drum. Even from far away in Bangkok - ah, sweet Bangkok, as the sun sets - I can see that the Post Office scandal has finally surfaced, and is roiling the seas of social media, and - belatedly - achieved national salience
Likewise @Peter_the_Punter and @IanB2 and everyone else who has jangled this tambourine. It now resounds
It STILL bores the moobs off me, but that is absolutely my fault for being easily bored by post offices. I shall watch the ITV drama tonight (which has clearly shifted everything); hopefully I will feel some empathy - and curiosity
Thanks.
I am interested professionally. But also because my own profession - not just lawyers but lawyers who do investigations - have behaved so abysmally. This shames me. I know what it is needed to do good investigations, to run a really effective investigations team, to manage the internal and external stakeholders, to gain the confidence and trust and respect of those you deal with etc., and to see the total lack of professionalism and any sense of ethical underpinning displayed in this case over such a long period and the utter shamelessness of those involved, even when faced with the human consequences of what they have done, really pains - and infuriates - me.
If it helps, think of it as a lot of creative types in Soho persecuted by some rogue AI and lying lawyers.
Indeed, and as I say, bravo for being a terrier with a rat, on this
As an occasional scribbler for the Gazette, I am now compelled by this, not coz I newly care about subpostmasters, but because i am fascinated to see how the scriptwriter of this ITV show took such a complex and yawning story and made it morally urgent and national news. Because he or see has clearly done a superb job, and will surely win prizes
After watching it I hope and expect to be as passionate as you about this. Well, nearly
Yes, that was my thought when I was watching it - turning something so complicated and convoluted and technical into a watchable drama is a tough gig. Of course, they have the undeniable and emotional human stories to hang the storyline on, which was done very effectively, but the series remains watchable even when it turns to the campaign, the legal case, and the goings on in parliament. And they had the added challenge that because the senior PO and government figures are still alive and didn't particiate, they had to be very careful on legal grounds (everything Vennells is shown saying and doing is documented - they couldn't resort to the sort of creative imagining that Netflix did with 'The Crown').
Of course, anyone who has followed the story in any detail can see the many corners they had to cut and things they skipped or glossed over, particularly over the legal twists and turns, and there are some critical events and issues from the court case that flashed by in seconds and you might miss the reference if you weren't already expecting it. But I thought it conveyed the story incredible well in the time available. Really the only major point that didn't quite work was the sudden leap from Bates worrying that the campaign had run out of legal funding, when the PO started kicking up after the verdict, and his equally sudden victory - the financing of which not explained - seconds later.
Having read Wallis's book, which has a lot of detail in it both personal and technical, but is nevertheless written in a readable and accessible style by clearly a talented journalist, must have helped the drama producers along, in terms of how to relate the story.
And clearly hasn't been given (or read) the briefing paper. That isn't a good look when this was an obvious question that was going to come up in interviews today.
I read on the previous thread that some sort of huge SNPbadness was about to break.
Well?
You are in Scotland. Nip down to the newsagent and tell us if they did "hold the front page" or if some PBer fell for a social media hoax and a photoshopped newspaper.
Buy a newspaper? Along with most of the population, I’m done with that caveman jive daddy oh.
Never underestimate the capacity of the average Yoon to whip themselves into a conspiracy fuelled frenzy.
I am getting visions of a TV crew finding 'the average Scot' - Perhaps called Glen and hailing from Dunfermline, and handing him a big cheque for £10,000 courtesy of independence.
Shockingly reductive to limit it to Scots. Just imagine the size of the cheques handed out to each English person once they no longer need to subsidise 'shithole' Scotland!
I’ll say this for Leon. He has at least a variety of topics he tries to derail threads onto. Your victim complex re-emerges every thread with the tedious inevitability of BJO reporting a drop in Labour polled vote share. Perhaps I’ll look for your LinkedIn profile to give yourself a bit more to get your teeth into.
It is clear that Davey did look into the allegations, but that the PO and Fujitsu insisted that the Horizon system didn't allow remote access and logged each entry in a separate file down to each keystroke.
We know that now not to be true, but that is Fujitsu's fault and untruth.
I think that's an answer to a different question - key presses have nothing to do with database transactions but it's unfair to expect none technical people to pick up the issue.
So Davey isn't at fault and at best Fujitsu carefully answered the question asked and not the question that was meant.
In reality I'm being very generous to Fujitsu there - they carefully answered a different question to the one that was being asked.
Saying a computer system is "robust" is meaningless. What does "robust" mean? Robust for what?
"Robust" is a word carefully chosen to mean, for the speaker, that the system runs and doesn't crash or collapse, yet to the listener, convey the impression it means "accurate".
Yes - but how daft must you be not to realise that. As I said, a lack of curiosity is very common in scandals, at least the ones I've been involved in.
An obvious, but missed, question for the Select Committee, despite Zahawi's bravura performance at the actual committee and risble acting in the drama, was to push back on what 'robust' actually meant. And those were our champion inquisitors, hand-picked for the job from a cast of millions.
It is clear that Davey did look into the allegations, but that the PO and Fujitsu insisted that the Horizon system didn't allow remote access and logged each entry in a separate file down to each keystroke.
We know that now not to be true, but that is Fujitsu's fault and untruth.
I think that's an answer to a different question - key presses have nothing to do with database transactions but it's unfair to expect none technical people to pick up the issue.
So Davey isn't at fault and at best Fujitsu carefully answered the question asked and not the question that was meant.
In reality I'm being very generous to Fujitsu there - they carefully answered a different question to the one that was being asked.
Saying a computer system is "robust" is meaningless. What does "robust" mean? Robust for what?
A software system may work very well for purpose A but not for purpose B. What error logs were there? What internal audit reports on it were there? What quality assurance was done? Etc. I am no IT expert but these questions are not hard to ask and even less so if you take advice from those who do understand these matters.
The other obvious questions to have asked are: who does the investigation into the discrepancies? What are their qualifications for doing so? How do they check that this is not caused by software or other faults? What quality assurance is done on their reports? Are these reports disclosed to the defendants during the prosecutions as they are legally obliged to be? And so on.
There was a basic lack of curiosity.
The balloon really should have gone up when Second Sight reported that they were being denied access to the documents they were promised. That was a red flag. Then when they were sacked just before their second report came out. That was another one.
Fair play to you @Cyclefree for banging this drum. Even from far away in Bangkok - ah, sweet Bangkok, as the sun sets - I can see that the Post Office scandal has finally surfaced, and is roiling the seas of social media, and - belatedly - achieved national salience
Likewise @Peter_the_Punter and @IanB2 and everyone else who has jangled this tambourine. It now resounds
It STILL bores the moobs off me, but that is absolutely my fault for being easily bored by post offices. I shall watch the ITV drama tonight (which has clearly shifted everything); hopefully I will feel some empathy - and curiosity
Thanks.
I am interested professionally. But also because my own profession - not just lawyers but lawyers who do investigations - have behaved so abysmally. This shames me. I know what it is needed to do good investigations, to run a really effective investigations team, to manage the internal and external stakeholders, to gain the confidence and trust and respect of those you deal with etc., and to see the total lack of professionalism and any sense of ethical underpinning displayed in this case over such a long period and the utter shamelessness of those involved, even when faced with the human consequences of what they have done, really pains - and infuriates - me.
If it helps, think of it as a lot of creative types in Soho persecuted by some rogue AI and lying lawyers.
Indeed, and as I say, bravo for being a terrier with a rat, on this
As an occasional scribbler for the Gazette, I am now compelled by this, not coz I newly care about subpostmasters, but because i am fascinated to see how the scriptwriter of this ITV show took such a complex and yawning story and made it morally urgent and national news. Because he or see has clearly done a superb job, and will surely win prizes
After watching it I hope and expect to be as passionate as you about this. Well, nearly
Yes, that was my thought when I was watching it - turning something so complicated and convoluted and technical into a watchable drama is a tough gig. Of course, they have the undeniable and emotional human stories to hang the storyline on, which was done very effectively, but the series remains watchable even when it turns to the campaign, the legal case, and the goings on in parliament. And they had the added challenge that because the senior PO and government figures are still alive and didn't particiate, they had to be very careful on legal grounds (everything Vennells is shown saying and doing is documented - they couldn't resort to the sort of creative imagining that Netflix did with 'The Crown').
Of course, anyone who has followed the story in any detail can see the many corners they had to cut and things they skipped or glossed over, particularly over the legal twists and turns, and there are some critical events and issues from the court case that flashed by in seconds and you might miss the reference if you weren't already expecting it. But I thought it conveyed the story incredible well in the time available. Really the only major point that didn't quite work was the sudden leap from Bates worrying that the campaign had run out of legal funding, when the PO started kicking up after the verdict, and his equally sudden victory - the financing of which not explained - seconds later.
Having read Wallis's book, which has a lot of detail in it both personal and technical, but is nevertheless written in a readable and accessible style by clearly a talented journalist, must have helped the drama producers along, in terms of how to relate the story.
I shall report back with my critique (or indeed my lavish praise)
Prima facie it does seem like the writer has done an excellent job. It has changed the national conversation. Few TV programmes do that
i remember my parents going on about a TV docu called “Cathy Comes Home”, which apparently did the same for homelessness back in the day (I’m not quite old enough to have seen it)
I read on the previous thread that some sort of huge SNPbadness was about to break.
Well?
Embargoed until this morning. It's 11.02am.
But the front page upon which this inverted pyramid of piffle appears to be based is out in the wild, informing its dwindling number of readers.
Still, it enabled you to shoe-horn “Scotland” into a PB conversation, a feat which becomes increasingly difficult as Sindy drifts off into the silent void of Not Actually Happening, like some NASA probe sadly passing beyond Pluto
Sez the man who but hours ago was touching himself inappropriately at prospect of some SNPbaddery on the basis of the WoS comments section.
And clearly hasn't been given (or read) the briefing paper. That isn't a good look when this was an obvious question that was going to come up in interviews today.
Without going the full Nadine Dorries, it has looked for some time as if CCHQ is working against the Prime Minister, although partly it is his own fault for letting them.
It is clear that Davey did look into the allegations, but that the PO and Fujitsu insisted that the Horizon system didn't allow remote access and logged each entry in a separate file down to each keystroke.
We know that now not to be true, but that is Fujitsu's fault and untruth.
I think that's an answer to a different question - key presses have nothing to do with database transactions but it's unfair to expect none technical people to pick up the issue.
So Davey isn't at fault and at best Fujitsu carefully answered the question asked and not the question that was meant.
In reality I'm being very generous to Fujitsu there - they carefully answered a different question to the one that was being asked.
Saying a computer system is "robust" is meaningless. What does "robust" mean? Robust for what?
A software system may work very well for purpose A but not for purpose B. What error logs were there? What internal audit reports on it were there? What quality assurance was done? Etc. I am no IT expert but these questions are not hard to ask and even less so if you take advice from those who do understand these matters.
The other obvious questions to have asked are: who does the investigation into the discrepancies? What are their qualifications for doing so? How do they check that this is not caused by software or other faults? What quality assurance is done on their reports? Are these reports disclosed to the defendants during the prosecutions as they are legally obliged to be? And so on.
There was a basic lack of curiosity.
The balloon really should have gone up when Second Sight reported that they were being denied access to the documents they were promised. That was a red flag. Then when they were sacked just before their second report came out. That was another one.
Fair play to you @Cyclefree for banging this drum. Even from far away in Bangkok - ah, sweet Bangkok, as the sun sets - I can see that the Post Office scandal has finally surfaced, and is roiling the seas of social media, and - belatedly - achieved national salience
Likewise @Peter_the_Punter and @IanB2 and everyone else who has jangled this tambourine. It now resounds
It STILL bores the moobs off me, but that is absolutely my fault for being easily bored by post offices. I shall watch the ITV drama tonight (which has clearly shifted everything); hopefully I will feel some empathy - and curiosity
Thanks.
I am interested professionally. But also because my own profession - not just lawyers but lawyers who do investigations - have behaved so abysmally. This shames me. I know what it is needed to do good investigations, to run a really effective investigations team, to manage the internal and external stakeholders, to gain the confidence and trust and respect of those you deal with etc., and to see the total lack of professionalism and any sense of ethical underpinning displayed in this case over such a long period and the utter shamelessness of those involved, even when faced with the human consequences of what they have done, really pains - and infuriates - me.
If it helps, think of it as a lot of creative types in Soho persecuted by some rogue AI and lying lawyers.
Indeed, and as I say, bravo for being a terrier with a rat, on this
As an occasional scribbler for the Gazette, I am now compelled by this, not coz I newly care about subpostmasters, but because i am fascinated to see how the scriptwriter of this ITV show took such a complex and yawning story and made it morally urgent and national news. Because he or see has clearly done a superb job, and will surely win prizes
After watching it I hope and expect to be as passionate as you about this. Well, nearly
It is positive that there is public interest in this post office situation but it seems to me like it may have gone too far and no one is going to get a fair hearing, the current petition about Vennells in particular has a whiff of a witch hunt about it. In looking at the cover ups and who knew what and what point it may not turn out to be exact good v evil situation, it could just be institutional arrogance and incompetence which is unfortunately a recurring fact of life.
I read on the previous thread that some sort of huge SNPbadness was about to break.
Well?
You are in Scotland. Nip down to the newsagent and tell us if they did "hold the front page" or if some PBer fell for a social media hoax and a photoshopped newspaper.
Buy a newspaper? Along with most of the population, I’m done with that caveman jive daddy oh.
Never underestimate the capacity of the average Yoon to whip themselves into a conspiracy fuelled frenzy.
I am getting visions of a TV crew finding 'the average Scot' - Perhaps called Glen and hailing from Dunfermline, and handing him a big cheque for £10,000 courtesy of independence.
Shockingly reductive to limit it to Scots. Just imagine the size of the cheques handed out to each English person once they no longer need to subsidise 'shithole' Scotland!
I’ll say this for Leon. He has at least a variety of topics he tries to derail threads onto. Your victim complex re-emerges every thread with the tedious inevitability of BJO reporting a drop in Labour polled vote share. Perhaps I’ll look for your LinkedIn profile to give yourself a bit more to get your teeth into.
And you conmenting on my posts with same tedious inevitability is par for the course. It's almost like you feel victimised by them..
Sunak was poor on Kunnessberg on BBC this morning then on Sky Starmer was uninspiring
For the first time in my near 80 years I am politically homeless and am certain I am not alone
I will not join any political party again and frankly have no confidence we have any prospect of addressing our country's deep seated problems with the current politicians on offer
It is clear that Davey did look into the allegations, but that the PO and Fujitsu insisted that the Horizon system didn't allow remote access and logged each entry in a separate file down to each keystroke.
We know that now not to be true, but that is Fujitsu's fault and untruth.
I think that's an answer to a different question - key presses have nothing to do with database transactions but it's unfair to expect none technical people to pick up the issue.
So Davey isn't at fault and at best Fujitsu carefully answered the question asked and not the question that was meant.
In reality I'm being very generous to Fujitsu there - they carefully answered a different question to the one that was being asked.
Saying a computer system is "robust" is meaningless. What does "robust" mean? Robust for what?
"Robust" is a word carefully chosen to mean, for the speaker, that the system runs and doesn't crash or collapse, yet to the listener, convey the impression it means "accurate".
Yes - but how daft must you be not to realise that. As I said, a lack of curiosity is very common in scandals, at least the ones I've been involved in.
An obvious, but missed, question for the Select Committee, despite Zahawi's bravura performance at the actual committee and risble acting in the drama, was to push back on what 'robust' actually meant. And those were our champion inquisitors, hand-picked for the job from a cast of millions.
And incidentally on the same point, while there were clearly some programming errors that led to mistakes in relatively rare circumstances, these were items that appeared on the lengthy bug lists that Fujitsu were collecting, and tended to be resolved as quickly as they could deal with them. The most likely explanation that has emerged so far as to why” so many discrepancies continued to appear over such an extended timescale is that they were caused by power outages (maybe of just a second or two) or poor connectivity, the sub post offices being particularly vulnerable because so many of them are in remote locations or operating out of inadequate premises. Such that the transaction made in the SPSO either wasn’t replicated at the server or got corrupted during transmission.
Sometimes, but not always, changing or repairing the kit or its wiring in the SPSO made the problems go away (or, alternatively, created problems where there had been none before).
This also explains why the majority of offices had no issues (which wouldn’t be the case with a major programming bug, which would of course affect everybody, depending on the spread of their transactions).
Whether such a system that couldn’t cope with (or even had, in the first place) unreliable power supply and connectivity, can reasonably be described as “robust”, is a good question?
There were some fundamental coding flaws as well - one mentioned in Wallis’s book was that some of the numerical codes transmitted across the system contained multiple bits of information that were run together, where the different codes being used not always had the same number of digits. Such that the items 123 45678 and 1234 5678 would both go across as 12345678. This created a rare error if the alternative ‘read’ of the code matched up with another ‘correct’ set of codes, and as an amateur looks like incredibly amateurish coding to me. As indeed the whistleblower from inside Fujitsu described.
I read on the previous thread that some sort of huge SNPbadness was about to break.
Well?
You are in Scotland. Nip down to the newsagent and tell us if they did "hold the front page" or if some PBer fell for a social media hoax and a photoshopped newspaper.
Buy a newspaper? Along with most of the population, I’m done with that caveman jive daddy oh.
Never underestimate the capacity of the average Yoon to whip themselves into a conspiracy fuelled frenzy.
I am getting visions of a TV crew finding 'the average Scot' - Perhaps called Glen and hailing from Dunfermline, and handing him a big cheque for £10,000 courtesy of independence.
Shockingly reductive to limit it to Scots. Just imagine the size of the cheques handed out to each English person once they no longer need to subsidise 'shithole' Scotland!
I’ll say this for Leon. He has at least a variety of topics he tries to derail threads onto. Your victim complex re-emerges every thread with the tedious inevitability of BJO reporting a drop in Labour polled vote share. Perhaps I’ll look for your LinkedIn profile to give yourself a bit more to get your teeth into.
And you commenting on my posts with same tedious inevitability is par for the course. It's almost like you feel victimised by them..
Another fantasy. I don’t regularly comment on your posts. At least no more than any other Joe Poster on here. Sorry I’m not giving you the attention you so badly crave. Go get tumescent with Disco Stu in Gothenburg about how dreadfully oppressed you are.
I've watched the Post Office drama over the last few days and it's pure weaponised Britishness.
Stunning mountain ranges Hillwalking in M&S shirts and ancient canvas packs Village Halls British Bake Off tribute act Union Flags everywhere The Queen, weirdly as the adversary Small, stubborn man with heart of gold Battling cancer but not making a fuss Incredibly posh Tory (but, as we all secretly hope, a decent chap) The White Witch (Narnia) Love Actually/Paddington style multi-culturalism Outrageous miscarriage of justice CAMRA (How many pints did he get through?!) Evil Corporation (with a funny forren name) Lawyers in pinstripes
Oh for the love of God, just fuck off the stage, Rishi. Just go.
To be replaced by who? Has Sir Keir been saying something I may have missed? Even Farage can't seem to muster much interest. It's almost as if the entire British establishment want this whole 'embarrassment' to go away.
Sunak was poor on Kunnessberg on BBC this morning then on Sky Starmer was uninspiring
For the first time in my near 80 years I am politically homeless and am certain I am not alone
I will not join any political party again and frankly have no confidence we have any prospect of addressing our country's deep seated problems with the current politicians on offer
Have you considered Laurence Fox and the 'reclaim' party? I would in all seriousness vote for them because I think their arguments should form part of the mainstream political discourse and not ridiculed/cancelled as they are at present. The more people attack the 'far right' the more I am minded to vote for them as an alternative to the failing model of business as usual.
I read on the previous thread that some sort of huge SNPbadness was about to break.
Well?
You are in Scotland. Nip down to the newsagent and tell us if they did "hold the front page" or if some PBer fell for a social media hoax and a photoshopped newspaper.
Buy a newspaper? Along with most of the population, I’m done with that caveman jive daddy oh.
Never underestimate the capacity of the average Yoon to whip themselves into a conspiracy fuelled frenzy.
I am getting visions of a TV crew finding 'the average Scot' - Perhaps called Glen and hailing from Dunfermline, and handing him a big cheque for £10,000 courtesy of independence.
Shockingly reductive to limit it to Scots. Just imagine the size of the cheques handed out to each English person once they no longer need to subsidise 'shithole' Scotland!
I’ll say this for Leon. He has at least a variety of topics he tries to derail threads onto. Your victim complex re-emerges every thread with the tedious inevitability of BJO reporting a drop in Labour polled vote share. Perhaps I’ll look for your LinkedIn profile to give yourself a bit more to get your teeth into.
And you commenting on my posts with same tedious inevitability is par for the course. It's almost like you feel victimised by them..
Another fantasy. I don’t regularly comment on your posts. At least no more than any other Joe Poster on here. Sorry I’m not giving you the attention you so badly crave. Go get tumescent with Disco Stu in Gothenburg about how dreadfully oppressed you are.
Golly, at home to Mr Touchy this fine mornin'.
Ok, let's get back to your hilarious if repetitive patter about the Truss comeback. Sorry, that should be 'hilarious'.
I've watched the Post Office drama over the last few days and it's pure weaponised Britishness.
Stunning mountain ranges Hillwalking in shirts and ancient canvas packs. Village Halls British Bake Off tribute act Union Flags everywhere The Queen, weirdly as the adversary Small, stubborn man with heart of gold Battling cancer but not making a fuss Incredibly posh Tory (but, as we all secretly hope, a decent chap) The White Witch (Narnia) Underdogs Outrageous miscarriage of justice CAMRA (How many pints did he get through?!) Evil Corporation (with a funny forren name) Lawyers in pinstripes
It's genius.
It was quite the most compelling drama and has outraged every decent person in the country
Alan Bates lives nearby and his portrayal, and others, was perfect and jail time must beckon for some
And it certainly showed how beautiful Llandudno and Eryri are but then I would say that as this is where we live
Sunak was poor on Kunnessberg on BBC this morning then on Sky Starmer was uninspiring
For the first time in my near 80 years I am politically homeless and am certain I am not alone
I will not join any political party again and frankly have no confidence we have any prospect of addressing our country's deep seated problems with the current politicians on offer
I get it but they are an improvement on what we were offered in 2019 from the two big parties. Brexit set the majority of the political class against a majority of the electorate. There is a chance the system may begin to settle down again.
And clearly hasn't been given (or read) the briefing paper. That isn't a good look when this was an obvious question that was going to come up in interviews today.
Without going the full Nadine Dorries, it has looked for some time as if CCHQ is working against the Prime Minister, although partly it is his own fault for letting them.
It's prep for the PM being interviewed so No 10 are the people responsible not CCHQ (who are probably working against him as well but that's not today's issue) but yep - he clearly wasn't fully preped.
Sunak was poor on Kunnessberg on BBC this morning then on Sky Starmer was uninspiring
For the first time in my near 80 years I am politically homeless and am certain I am not alone
I will not join any political party again and frankly have no confidence we have any prospect of addressing our country's deep seated problems with the current politicians on offer
Have you considered Laurence Fox and the 'reclaim' party? I would in all seriousness vote for them because I think their arguments should form part of the mainstream political discourse and not ridiculed/cancelled as they are at present. The more people attack the 'far right' the more I am minded to vote for them as an alternative to the failing model of business as usual.
To be honest I have more important health issues at present and no, I do not support the far right
It is clear that Davey did look into the allegations, but that the PO and Fujitsu insisted that the Horizon system didn't allow remote access and logged each entry in a separate file down to each keystroke.
We know that now not to be true, but that is Fujitsu's fault and untruth.
I think that's an answer to a different question - key presses have nothing to do with database transactions but it's unfair to expect none technical people to pick up the issue.
So Davey isn't at fault and at best Fujitsu carefully answered the question asked and not the question that was meant.
In reality I'm being very generous to Fujitsu there - they carefully answered a different question to the one that was being asked.
Saying a computer system is "robust" is meaningless. What does "robust" mean? Robust for what?
"Robust" is a word carefully chosen to mean, for the speaker, that the system runs and doesn't crash or collapse, yet to the listener, convey the impression it means "accurate".
Yes - but how daft must you be not to realise that. As I said, a lack of curiosity is very common in scandals, at least the ones I've been involved in.
An obvious, but missed, question for the Select Committee, despite Zahawi's bravura performance at the actual committee and risble acting in the drama, was to push back on what 'robust' actually meant. And those were our champion inquisitors, hand-picked for the job from a cast of millions.
And incidentally on the same point, while there were clearly some programming errors that led to mistakes in relatively rare circumstances, these were items that appeared on the lengthy bug lists that Fujitsu were collecting, and tended to be resolved as quickly as they could deal with them. The most likely explanation that has emerged so far as to why” so many discrepancies continued to appear over such an extended timescale is that they were caused by power outages (maybe of just a second or two) or poor connectivity, the sub post offices being particularly vulnerable because so many of them are in remote locations or operating out of inadequate premises. Such that the transaction made in the SPSO either wasn’t replicated at the server or got corrupted during transmission.
Sometimes, but not always, changing or repairing the kit or its wiring in the SPSO made the problems go away (or, alternatively, created problems where there had been none before).
This also explains why the majority of offices had no issues (which wouldn’t be the case with a major programming bug, which would of course affect everybody, depending on the spread of their transactions).
Whether such a system that couldn’t cope with (or even had, in the first place) unreliable power supply and connectivity, can reasonably be described as “robust”, is a good question?
There were some fundamental coding flaws as well - one mentioned in Wallis’s book was that some of the numerical codes transmitted across the system contained multiple bits of information that were run together, where the different codes being used not always had the same number of digits. Such that the items 123 45678 and 1234 5678 would both go across as 12345678. This created a rare error if the alternative ‘read’ of the code matched up with another ‘correct’ set of codes, and as an amateur looks like incredibly amateurish coding to me. As indeed the whistleblower from inside Fujitsu described.
That really isn't an excuse though - transactions across distributed systems was a common issue back in the 1990's with known implementation patterns to solve those issues.
An interesting piece. Examples of the graphs would have helped but I appreciate length is always an issue for a header.
What the header, and indeed the discussion BTL, show is that it is increasingly difficult and complicated to classify someone's political beliefs in a broad category that carries a coherent meaning. One point that I think hasn't been made to date is that this is the reason that political parties have also become less coherent and disciplined.
So yesterday we had a former Tory Minister Chris Skidmore resigning because he doesn't think that the government should be issuing licences for fresh exploration in the North Sea. How do you classify that? According to Wiki he was Chairman of the Bow Group and a fellow of the Policy Exchange. He has been active in Tory politics since he was a teenager and supported Truss's Free Enterprise Group. An almost classic Tory but he has resigned the Whip and may soon be to resign his seat. If you can't create a tent big enough to include people like that how do you create a government?
Holding parties together in such an atmosphere is incredibly difficult creating governments that lack coherence, stability and a sense of purpose. I think that the politician who has proven to be the best at this in recent decades was Nicola Sturgeon but look what has happened since she left the scene. The famous SNP self discipline has collapsed and dissent is rife. This simply means that the SNP have fallen to earth and are in a similar position to most political parties.
We see this in the Commons. Both parties have an exceptional number of people who have been expelled or simply chosen to leave. In Labour's case this includes the former leader. In the last Parliament we had the likes of Ken Clarke expelled. What this means for the future is that any government elected with a small majority simply will not survive. There will be too many single issue obsessives who will split away.
We need more than two parties of government. Far better is PR, where all strands of opinion can be voiced.
One reason that I have never entered party politics for election (though have been a member of Labour 1994-2003, and Lib Dems 2013-present) is that my political views are incoherent. They really do not match any political party. I am a minority of one.
I am similar and I expect an increasing majority are. I was last in a political party in about 2008 being the Lib Dems. Since then I have been broadly Conservative but deeply frustrated with much of their policies most of the time. Cameron came closest to bringing me into the fold but since then it has been much more problematic. The current government's policies on Rwanda, on HS2, on defence and on the taxation of those who work for a living have driven me to distraction. I will not be joining any political party soon.
I too was taken in by Cameron, and voted for the Conservatives in 2010. I saw the need for change, and how New Labour had become rotten in power, and was willing to take at face value that the Conservative Party had changed. It had indeed changed, but the social liberalism of Cameroonism has certainly been reversed now, replaced by a rather unpleasant streak of Culture War.
I do look back on the Coalition positively, despite some significant errors including by the Lib Dems. Indeed that was when I became active on PB.
Conservatives in the UK are newcomers to the culture war, they didnt realise it was being waged until metaphorically the Germans were five miles out from Moscow. And then when the Germans (metaphorically) encounter some people in the suburbs of Moscow a bit concerned about about the amount of ground they seemed to have lost in a conflict they didnt even realise was happening, start to draw attention and pushing back, the Germans like cry bullies start accusing the Moscowvian citizens of starting a culture war.
Sunak was poor on Kunnessberg on BBC this morning then on Sky Starmer was uninspiring
For the first time in my near 80 years I am politically homeless and am certain I am not alone
I will not join any political party again and frankly have no confidence we have any prospect of addressing our country's deep seated problems with the current politicians on offer
Have you considered Laurence Fox and the 'reclaim' party? I would in all seriousness vote for them because I think their arguments should form part of the mainstream political discourse and not ridiculed/cancelled as they are at present. The more people attack the 'far right' the more I am minded to vote for them as an alternative to the failing model of business as usual.
That would be the reclaim party led by someone who is very likely going to be confirmed to be racist across mulitple court cases in the near future.
The problem is his viewpoints include views that deem him unacceptable - plus he had a habit (as with many others) of insisting on free speech only up to the point they hear something they don't like at which point they do everything they can to avoid hearing opinions that they don't like.
And further to my post above, that much of the errors seemingly arose due to power and connectivity issues out in the field, but wouldn't occur on the test rigs at Fujitsu data centre in Bracknell nor on the terminals PO presumably had to play with at Old Street is perhaps the tiniest bit of mitigation for their saying for so long that they couldn't find anything wrong...
Indeed the infamous "you're the only one having problems" might just possibly have started out as "we can't see this issue at HQ"..
But of course the programming was also crap, and Fujitsu for one knew that all along.
Sunak was poor on Kunnessberg on BBC this morning then on Sky Starmer was uninspiring
For the first time in my near 80 years I am politically homeless and am certain I am not alone
I will not join any political party again and frankly have no confidence we have any prospect of addressing our country's deep seated problems with the current politicians on offer
Don't want to go all Brecht here, but isn't the bigger problem, what the British electorate will vote for?
We've spent decades voting to get more and pay less, filling the gap by selling stuff off (yes, I am looking at you Margaret) and borrowing unsustainably (what's that Gordon? Actually, I do mean you) and sweating assets beyond their limits (in case you were feeling left out George).
There's no way out of this that doesn't involve quite a bit less consumption, quite a bit more tax (especially on the gains people have made through asset inflation) and a redirection of spending to investment for the future.
But if an election comes down to "accept the hangover" vs. "hair of the dog", the second will always win, no matter how persuasive the leader of the first is.
One of the absurdities of the post office prosecutions were that people were sent to jail for minor fraud and theft. There is a real thirst for vengeance amongst the English which we are seeing again with the desire for 'jail time' for those in the Post Office that initiated the prosecutions. Other than keeping the most dangerous offenders away from the rest of society jail is an enormous waste of money, punishment and rehabilitation is better done outside of custody. If the rest of Europe can accept this why can't the English?
In short: Russia has been allowed to determine the rules of play The west has focused on doing just enough but no more Fear of escalation only emboldens Putin to go further We have hoped for the best and not prepared for the worst*
*This is a little unclear as at times it appears as if some in the west really do fear a Russian defeat. Others appeared to hope that with enough weapons to Ukraine Russian morale would capitulate.
Sunak was poor on Kunnessberg on BBC this morning then on Sky Starmer was uninspiring
For the first time in my near 80 years I am politically homeless and am certain I am not alone
I will not join any political party again and frankly have no confidence we have any prospect of addressing our country's deep seated problems with the current politicians on offer
Don't want to go all Brecht here, but isn't the bigger problem, what the British electorate will vote for?
We've spent decades voting to get more and pay less, filling the gap by selling stuff off (yes, I am looking at you Margaret) and borrowing unsustainably (what's that Gordon? Actually, I do mean you) and sweating assets beyond their limits (in case you were feeling left out George).
There's no way out of this that doesn't involve quite a bit less consumption, quite a bit more tax (especially on the gains people have made through asset inflation) and a redirection of spending to investment for the future.
But if an election comes down to "accept the hangover" vs. "hair of the dog", the second will always win, no matter how persuasive the leader of the first is.
I still think of this as circle, or horseshoe if you prefer; extreme left and right become indistinguishable autocracies.
I don't think that a very accurate picture. The far right and far left don't look much alike apart from being prone to both factionalism and political violence. Its the acceptance of verbal and physical violence as a political tool that leads to anti-semitism, and factionalism is rooted in personality cults.
I suggest that it's hard to divide dictatorships into two radically different camps according to how it feels to be on the receiving end. Many of the attitudes and many of the outcomes are very similar. Ask the Poles. And of course Mr H (let's try and dodge Godwin's law with an initial) and his party started out as socialist. Yes, the two sides hate each other, but that's because they're rivals for the same radical intolerance and hate each other in the way of two violent gangs of opposing football team supporters. Yet they're both football gangs.
If you tried to generalise, a left-wing dictatorship tends to be pretty grim for most people except for a small preferred elite, whereas a right-wing dictatorship tends to be truly appalling for a minority and perhaps not quite so bad for a majority. But I'm not sure even that generalisation would stand up to too many examples.
It does just largely descend into the same thing. I do actively dislike the defining of fascism as just something horrible that you dont like. It was more than that it was a creed, a loose set of ideas which more than just hating disabled people and internationalists polluting national values (and sucking resources away from the nation).
I think there are some defining features of fascism that are distinct.
1) Leadership cults are integral to fascism. The vision of the Leader embodying the people, and therefore the state. They are however not unique to facism, being found in other totalitarian systems like Communism, Theocracies and absolute monarchies.
2) There is an idealisation of a unique people, with a common culture and outlook, with special distinctive features and manifest destiny.
This refuses to accept that the people are not a single variety, but are actually quite diverse ethnically, culturally, religiously etc. This is the root of the nativism and racism of fascist ideology.
3) There is a culture of physicality and machismo, that defines the reborn nation and has contempt for intellectualism and other habits seen as effete. This leads to systemic homophobia, misogyny and political violence.
I don't think we have more than a tiny percentage of such people in Britain.
No, quite. But, it is really easy to squint your eyes and apply the above to pretty much any government. 1) If you loath Blair or Johnson, its easy to attach a cult of personality to them and their followers.. There was certainly a cult of personality to Thatcher. 2) Could easily apply to the USA more than any on the planet, but not specifically racial. You join us you become us ethos. It's certainly the SNP claims of civic nationalism. But it can be argued if you dont think there is something specifically good about your own place/tribe, is suspicious and unusual. 3) The best way to create contempt for intellectualism is to put those with phds regularly in the news. Never before has public facing science and intellectualism shown itself to be an empty vessel. The rot began with the reaction to Brexit here, and Trump in the USA and chef kissed with Covid responses and reactions to BLM.
Sunak was poor on Kunnessberg on BBC this morning then on Sky Starmer was uninspiring
For the first time in my near 80 years I am politically homeless and am certain I am not alone
I will not join any political party again and frankly have no confidence we have any prospect of addressing our country's deep seated problems with the current politicians on offer
Have you considered Laurence Fox and the 'reclaim' party? I would in all seriousness vote for them because I think their arguments should form part of the mainstream political discourse and not ridiculed/cancelled as they are at present. The more people attack the 'far right' the more I am minded to vote for them as an alternative to the failing model of business as usual.
To be honest I have more important health issues at present and no, I do not support the far right
Reflecting on the concept of political homelessness, as it’s something people regularly talk about on here and elsewhere. Is it such a bad thing, or indeed particularly unusual? Perhaps the best thing to do is embrace the homelessness. It means you’re a floating voter and will make a choice at h to w ballot box in the same way the vast majority of voters do - based on which party, on balance, makes most sense to vote for in that particular moment for that particular political office.
I think it’s helpful to view political allegiance a bit like tax residency and domicile.
As a taxpayer you are resident in a particular jurisdiction. That’s your current affiliation. But you may be domiciled elsewhere - where your true heart it. Where you would want to be buried. And you may also travel around outside your current location for particular elections, as a short term business visitor.
I would describe myself as domiciled and resident in the Lib Dems (some sort of Ashdownesque pragmatic version, not Orange Book, not SDP). Many on here are domiciled in the Tories but currently resident in the LDs or Labour, and some others might be Labour domiciled but on a secondment to the greens.
If you don’t feel currently resident anywhere, then treat it as an extended cruise in international waters where you get to moor in various harbours and look around the neighbourhood at election time.
One of the absurdities of the post office prosecutions were that people were sent to jail for minor fraud and theft. There is a real thirst for vengeance amongst the English which we are seeing again with the desire for 'jail time' for those in the Post Office that initiated the prosecutions. Other than keeping the most dangerous offenders away from the rest of society jail is an enormous waste of money, punishment and rehabilitation is better done outside of custody. If the rest of Europe can accept this why can't the English?
What is this 'English' about this story
Alan Bates ran the post office here in Llandudno and a SPM from Anglesey was jailed
Interesting article. Thank you. A couple of points.
The usefulness of words of often simply so that we can understand and identify without any special overtones. 'Table' and 'cow' are examples.
'Fascist' is not such a word, nor are many political labels. 'Fascist' is protean, and its use is mostly a sort of game of ensuring you are not called one while others are.
I and lots of others however use the word 'fascistic' about the tendencies of Trump. This is because of reasons, of which three are quite special.
Firstly he uses intimidation threat and violence, secondly, and linked, he will not accept any result about anything unless he wins, and thirdly further linked, all language is used as a servant of his interests and not truth. The use of lies unceasingly - the big and constant lie - has a long and distinguished fascist history.
Other descriptions are available but fascistic will do.
No-one in the UK remotely resembles this. Not even the SNP or our UK government. Being useless and horrible is very different. We should be grateful for small mercies.
One of the absurdities of the post office prosecutions were that people were sent to jail for minor fraud and theft. There is a real thirst for vengeance amongst the English which we are seeing again with the desire for 'jail time' for those in the Post Office that initiated the prosecutions. Other than keeping the most dangerous offenders away from the rest of society jail is an enormous waste of money, punishment and rehabilitation is better done outside of custody. If the rest of Europe can accept this why can't the English?
Made worse by the sentence reductions offered to plead guilty at the earliest opportunity. I might be wrong, but I dont even think you can be eligible for parole without accepting your guilt. There's an article in a newspaper today of a woman pleading guilty to a crime she didnt commit rather than return to jail risk being raped/assaulted by men who have somehow persuaded prison authorities they should be housed in a woman's prison.
Sunak was poor on Kunnessberg on BBC this morning then on Sky Starmer was uninspiring
For the first time in my near 80 years I am politically homeless and am certain I am not alone
I will not join any political party again and frankly have no confidence we have any prospect of addressing our country's deep seated problems with the current politicians on offer
Have you considered Laurence Fox and the 'reclaim' party? I would in all seriousness vote for them because I think their arguments should form part of the mainstream political discourse and not ridiculed/cancelled as they are at present. The more people attack the 'far right' the more I am minded to vote for them as an alternative to the failing model of business as usual.
To be honest I have more important health issues at present and no, I do not support the far right
Reflecting on the concept of political homelessness, as it’s something people regularly talk about on here and elsewhere. Is it such a bad thing, or indeed particularly unusual? Perhaps the best thing to do is embrace the homelessness. It means you’re a floating voter and will make a choice at h to w ballot box in the same way the vast majority of voters do - based on which party, on balance, makes most sense to vote for in that particular moment for that particular political office.
I think it’s helpful to view political allegiance a bit like tax residency and domicile.
As a taxpayer you are resident in a particular jurisdiction. That’s your current affiliation. But you may be domiciled elsewhere - where your true heart it. Where you would want to be buried. And you may also travel around outside your current location for particular elections, as a short term business visitor.
I would describe myself as domiciled and resident in the Lib Dems (some sort of Ashdownesque pragmatic version, not Orange Book, not SDP). Many on here are domiciled in the Tories but currently resident in the LDs or Labour, and some others might be Labour domiciled but on a secondment to the greens.
If you don’t feel currently resident anywhere, then treat it as an extended cruise in international waters where you get to moor in various harbours and look around the neighbourhood at election time.
Re your last paragraph we have certainly been on over 15 cruises across the world and experienced many different cultures, but ultimately the saying, east, west, home is best applies
It is clear that Davey did look into the allegations, but that the PO and Fujitsu insisted that the Horizon system didn't allow remote access and logged each entry in a separate file down to each keystroke.
We know that now not to be true, but that is Fujitsu's fault and untruth.
I think that's an answer to a different question - key presses have nothing to do with database transactions but it's unfair to expect none technical people to pick up the issue.
So Davey isn't at fault and at best Fujitsu carefully answered the question asked and not the question that was meant.
In reality I'm being very generous to Fujitsu there - they carefully answered a different question to the one that was being asked.
Saying a computer system is "robust" is meaningless. What does "robust" mean? Robust for what?
A software system may work very well for purpose A but not for purpose B. What error logs were there? What internal audit reports on it were there? What quality assurance was done? Etc. I am no IT expert but these questions are not hard to ask and even less so if you take advice from those who do understand these matters.
The other obvious questions to have asked are: who does the investigation into the discrepancies? What are their qualifications for doing so? How do they check that this is not caused by software or other faults? What quality assurance is done on their reports? Are these reports disclosed to the defendants during the prosecutions as they are legally obliged to be? And so on.
There was a basic lack of curiosity.
The balloon really should have gone up when Second Sight reported that they were being denied access to the documents they were promised. That was a red flag. Then when they were sacked just before their second report came out. That was another one.
Fair play to you @Cyclefree for banging this drum. Even from far away in Bangkok - ah, sweet Bangkok, as the sun sets - I can see that the Post Office scandal has finally surfaced, and is roiling the seas of social media, and - belatedly - achieved national salience
Likewise @Peter_the_Punter and @IanB2 and everyone else who has jangled this tambourine. It now resounds
It STILL bores the moobs off me, but that is absolutely my fault for being easily bored by post offices. I shall watch the ITV drama tonight (which has clearly shifted everything); hopefully I will feel some empathy - and curiosity
Thanks.
I am interested professionally. But also because my own profession - not just lawyers but lawyers who do investigations - have behaved so abysmally. This shames me. I know what it is needed to do good investigations, to run a really effective investigations team, to manage the internal and external stakeholders, to gain the confidence and trust and respect of those you deal with etc., and to see the total lack of professionalism and any sense of ethical underpinning displayed in this case over such a long period and the utter shamelessness of those involved, even when faced with the human consequences of what they have done, really pains - and infuriates - me.
If it helps, think of it as a lot of creative types in Soho persecuted by some rogue AI and lying lawyers.
Indeed, and as I say, bravo for being a terrier with a rat, on this
As an occasional scribbler for the Gazette, I am now compelled by this, not coz I newly care about subpostmasters, but because i am fascinated to see how the scriptwriter of this ITV show took such a complex and yawning story and made it morally urgent and national news. Because he or see has clearly done a superb job, and will surely win prizes
After watching it I hope and expect to be as passionate as you about this. Well, nearly
Yes, that was my thought when I was watching it - turning something so complicated and convoluted and technical into a watchable drama is a tough gig. Of course, they have the undeniable and emotional human stories to hang the storyline on, which was done very effectively, but the series remains watchable even when it turns to the campaign, the legal case, and the goings on in parliament. And they had the added challenge that because the senior PO and government figures are still alive and didn't particiate, they had to be very careful on legal grounds (everything Vennells is shown saying and doing is documented - they couldn't resort to the sort of creative imagining that Netflix did with 'The Crown').
Of course, anyone who has followed the story in any detail can see the many corners they had to cut and things they skipped or glossed over, particularly over the legal twists and turns, and there are some critical events and issues from the court case that flashed by in seconds and you might miss the reference if you weren't already expecting it. But I thought it conveyed the story incredible well in the time available. Really the only major point that didn't quite work was the sudden leap from Bates worrying that the campaign had run out of legal funding, when the PO started kicking up after the verdict, and his equally sudden victory - the financing of which not explained - seconds later.
Having read Wallis's book, which has a lot of detail in it both personal and technical, but is nevertheless written in a readable and accessible style by clearly a talented journalist, must have helped the drama producers along, in terms of how to relate the story.
It's undoubtedly the compelling figures at its centre that does it - plus the Kafkaesque injustice that's plainer on screen than on the page.
If you think back to the successful issue-led Hollywood Oscar-bait of the 90s and early 2000s, the key to them was a compelling and unusual central character taking on a corporate goliath against seemingly impossible odds. Think Erin Brockovich or Jeffrey Wigand.
Bates, Jo Hamilton, and to some extent the others are similarly set up. There's just something first horrifying, and then to some extent emotionally satisfying when they start to win, to have these incredibly British, unobtrusive, everyman (and woman) characters caught in a nightmare and then refusing to be defeated.
Sunak was poor on Kunnessberg on BBC this morning then on Sky Starmer was uninspiring
For the first time in my near 80 years I am politically homeless and am certain I am not alone
I will not join any political party again and frankly have no confidence we have any prospect of addressing our country's deep seated problems with the current politicians on offer
If we ever get to a leaders election debate it will be the most boring programme we have seen
It is clear that Davey did look into the allegations, but that the PO and Fujitsu insisted that the Horizon system didn't allow remote access and logged each entry in a separate file down to each keystroke.
We know that now not to be true, but that is Fujitsu's fault and untruth.
I think that's an answer to a different question - key presses have nothing to do with database transactions but it's unfair to expect none technical people to pick up the issue.
So Davey isn't at fault and at best Fujitsu carefully answered the question asked and not the question that was meant.
In reality I'm being very generous to Fujitsu there - they carefully answered a different question to the one that was being asked.
Saying a computer system is "robust" is meaningless. What does "robust" mean? Robust for what?
"Robust" is a word carefully chosen to mean, for the speaker, that the system runs and doesn't crash or collapse, yet to the listener, convey the impression it means "accurate".
Yes - but how daft must you be not to realise that. As I said, a lack of curiosity is very common in scandals, at least the ones I've been involved in.
An obvious, but missed, question for the Select Committee, despite Zahawi's bravura performance at the actual committee and risble acting in the drama, was to push back on what 'robust' actually meant. And those were our champion inquisitors, hand-picked for the job from a cast of millions.
And incidentally on the same point, while there were clearly some programming errors that led to mistakes in relatively rare circumstances, these were items that appeared on the lengthy bug lists that Fujitsu were collecting, and tended to be resolved as quickly as they could deal with them. The most likely explanation that has emerged so far as to why” so many discrepancies continued to appear over such an extended timescale is that they were caused by power outages (maybe of just a second or two) or poor connectivity, the sub post offices being particularly vulnerable because so many of them are in remote locations or operating out of inadequate premises. Such that the transaction made in the SPSO either wasn’t replicated at the server or got corrupted during transmission.
Sometimes, but not always, changing or repairing the kit or its wiring in the SPSO made the problems go away (or, alternatively, created problems where there had been none before).
This also explains why the majority of offices had no issues (which wouldn’t be the case with a major programming bug, which would of course affect everybody, depending on the spread of their transactions).
Whether such a system that couldn’t cope with (or even had, in the first place) unreliable power supply and connectivity, can reasonably be described as “robust”, is a good question?
There were some fundamental coding flaws as well - one mentioned in Wallis’s book was that some of the numerical codes transmitted across the system contained multiple bits of information that were run together, where the different codes being used not always had the same number of digits. Such that the items 123 45678 and 1234 5678 would both go across as 12345678. This created a rare error if the alternative ‘read’ of the code matched up with another ‘correct’ set of codes, and as an amateur looks like incredibly amateurish coding to me. As indeed the whistleblower from inside Fujitsu described.
That really isn't an excuse though - transactions across distributed systems was a common issue back in the 1990's with known implementation patterns to solve those issues.
It does sound as if Fujitsu had a bunch of programming cowboys who were learning as they went along, deployed onto one of the biggest IT projects in the world...
Not long before launch they brought in some experts to take a look at the program, given the problems they were having getting it ready, and one of them has given evidence that he told them that the accounting modules at the very heart of it were a mess, patched up into oblivion, and that really they should re-code it from scratch.
But, already suffering penalties for contractual overrun, instead they decided to continue patching and launch it hoping for the best...and the rest is history
Sunak was poor on Kunnessberg on BBC this morning then on Sky Starmer was uninspiring
For the first time in my near 80 years I am politically homeless and am certain I am not alone
I will not join any political party again and frankly have no confidence we have any prospect of addressing our country's deep seated problems with the current politicians on offer
Don't want to go all Brecht here, but isn't the bigger problem, what the British electorate will vote for?
We've spent decades voting to get more and pay less, filling the gap by selling stuff off (yes, I am looking at you Margaret) and borrowing unsustainably (what's that Gordon? Actually, I do mean you) and sweating assets beyond their limits (in case you were feeling left out George).
There's no way out of this that doesn't involve quite a bit less consumption, quite a bit more tax (especially on the gains people have made through asset inflation) and a redirection of spending to investment for the future.
But if an election comes down to "accept the hangover" vs. "hair of the dog", the second will always win, no matter how persuasive the leader of the first is.
The answer is very simple in principle, though admittedly not entirely simple in execution.
We just need to adopt sortition. Place the political decision-making process in the hands of randomly selected representatives of the electorate. Do away with professional politicians. If current politicians want to pursue a similar career to their present one, let them be advocates of one course or another, but make it crystal clear to them that they _are_ going to be advocates and not decision-makers. Their job would be to present a sufficiently cogent case for any particular course of action, that it would be convincing to the representatives of the people, who would benefit from the same advice from the civil service that is currently provided to professional politicians.
I think now that the machines will take over before there is time for this to happen, but if not - God willing - it will happen sooner or later.
It started back then, but it is still going on and has only recently begun to be addressed seriously.
Somebody briefed him very, very badly.
Yup. With arguably the most inexcusable bits - when they knew something was badly wrong but were denying and obfuscating, during the coalition and Cameron years. Not that specific politicians bear direct responsibility.
No one escapes blame, but "it was a long time ago" is precisely the wrong response given it's in large part what the worst people on the Post Office side were counting on by dragging it out for so long. That time and expense would force these poor people to give up, and inevitably politicians would have done so too.
Sunak was poor on Kunnessberg on BBC this morning then on Sky Starmer was uninspiring
For the first time in my near 80 years I am politically homeless and am certain I am not alone
I will not join any political party again and frankly have no confidence we have any prospect of addressing our country's deep seated problems with the current politicians on offer
Don't want to go all Brecht here, but isn't the bigger problem, what the British electorate will vote for?
We've spent decades voting to get more and pay less, filling the gap by selling stuff off (yes, I am looking at you Margaret) and borrowing unsustainably (what's that Gordon? Actually, I do mean you) and sweating assets beyond their limits (in case you were feeling left out George).
There's no way out of this that doesn't involve quite a bit less consumption, quite a bit more tax (especially on the gains people have made through asset inflation) and a redirection of spending to investment for the future.
But if an election comes down to "accept the hangover" vs. "hair of the dog", the second will always win, no matter how persuasive the leader of the first is.
SFAICS this became absolutely acute at the point where the 1992 election was lost by Labour partly on account of saying something which allowed the 'Labour' Tax Bombshell' campaign. We have never recovered. This is 32 years ago.
No party aiming at government (there are only 2) is going to risk this, so we are stuck with the ludicrous strangulation of real discussion about debt, tax, spend, borrow at election time.
I can see only two ways out, neither of which are likely. A voter revolt, or a cross party truce to agree a common formula like 'Both Tory and Labour will tax at the level which will meet our spending commitments. Taxes can go up as well as down. Taxes are high because state managed expenditure is nearly 50% of GDP. Get over it'.
It started back then, but it is still going on and has only recently begun to be addressed seriously.
Somebody briefed him very, very badly.
Yup. With arguably the most inexcusable bits - when they knew something was badly wrong but were denying and obfuscating, during the coalition and Cameron years. Not that specific politicians bear direct responsibility.
No one escapes blame, but "it was a long time ago" is precisely the wrong response given it's in large part what the worst people on the Post Office side were counting on by dragging it out for so long. That time and expense would force these poor people to give up, and inevitably politicians would have done so too.
I would just comment that no amount of compensation can address the serious mental health issues, including PTSD, suffered by many nor of course those who committed suicide and the ones who have died
One of the absurdities of the post office prosecutions were that people were sent to jail for minor fraud and theft. There is a real thirst for vengeance amongst the English which we are seeing again with the desire for 'jail time' for those in the Post Office that initiated the prosecutions. Other than keeping the most dangerous offenders away from the rest of society jail is an enormous waste of money, punishment and rehabilitation is better done outside of custody. If the rest of Europe can accept this why can't the English?
One of the most effective moments in the TV drama, Darkage, was when the wrongly convicted SPM from Anglesey, Noel Thomas, turned to the camera and said of his tormentors 'Don't send them to prison. I've been there. It does no good. Hit them in the pockets.'
I suppose there is no way the guilty ones could have their Post Office Pensions blocked?
It started back then, but it is still going on and has only recently begun to be addressed seriously.
Somebody briefed him very, very badly.
Yup. With arguably the most inexcusable bits - when they knew something was badly wrong but were denying and obfuscating, during the coalition and Cameron years. Not that specific politicians bear direct responsibility.
No one escapes blame, but "it was a long time ago" is precisely the wrong response given it's in large part what the worst people on the Post Office side were counting on by dragging it out for so long. That time and expense would force these poor people to give up, and inevitably politicians would have done so too.
Sunak's: "Obviously it's something that happened a very long time ago in the 90s" is patently a lie.
Correct me if I'm wrong but Horizon roll-out started in 2000, and the erroneous, vindictive, and possibly fraudulent prosecutions were all in the 2000s.
It seems to me Sunak is increasingly just making things up as he goes.
And further to my post above, that much of the errors seemingly arose due to power and connectivity issues out in the field, but wouldn't occur on the test rigs at Fujitsu data centre in Bracknell nor on the terminals PO presumably had to play with at Old Street is perhaps the tiniest bit of mitigation for their saying for so long that they couldn't find anything wrong...
Indeed the infamous "you're the only one having problems" might just possibly have started out as "we can't see this issue at HQ"..
But of course the programming was also crap, and Fujitsu for one knew that all along.
In his appearance before the public Inquiry, former Fujitsu man Richard Rolls described the Horizon system as 'crap'.
It was one of the few light moment in this solemn affair. Even the po-faced KC, Jason Beer, was seen to crack a smile.
One of the absurdities of the post office prosecutions were that people were sent to jail for minor fraud and theft. There is a real thirst for vengeance amongst the English which we are seeing again with the desire for 'jail time' for those in the Post Office that initiated the prosecutions. Other than keeping the most dangerous offenders away from the rest of society jail is an enormous waste of money, punishment and rehabilitation is better done outside of custody. If the rest of Europe can accept this why can't the English?
One of the most effective moments in the TV drama, Darkage, was when the wrongly convicted SPM from Anglesey, Noel Thomas, turned to the camera and said of his tormentors 'Don't send them to prison. I've been there. It does no good. Hit them in the pockets.'
I suppose there is no way the guilty ones could have their Post Office Pensions blocked?
Make them draw them in cash from a Post Office Branch. On the Isle of Barra. With a video of @TSE and @Anabobazina extolling the evils of cash on a big screen outside it.
One of the absurdities of the post office prosecutions were that people were sent to jail for minor fraud and theft. There is a real thirst for vengeance amongst the English which we are seeing again with the desire for 'jail time' for those in the Post Office that initiated the prosecutions. Other than keeping the most dangerous offenders away from the rest of society jail is an enormous waste of money, punishment and rehabilitation is better done outside of custody. If the rest of Europe can accept this why can't the English?
One of the most effective moments in the TV drama, Darkage, was when the wrongly convicted SPM from Anglesey, Noel Thomas, turned to the camera and said of his tormentors 'Don't send them to prison. I've been there. It does no good. Hit them in the pockets.'
I suppose there is no way the guilty ones could have their Post Office Pensions blocked?
Not something I would recommend - awful precedent. No, they should just face massive fines. If they end up bankrupt, so be it - that's what they did to a lot of sub-postmasters.
It started back then, but it is still going on and has only recently begun to be addressed seriously.
Somebody briefed him very, very badly.
Yup. With arguably the most inexcusable bits - when they knew something was badly wrong but were denying and obfuscating, during the coalition and Cameron years. Not that specific politicians bear direct responsibility.
No one escapes blame, but "it was a long time ago" is precisely the wrong response given it's in large part what the worst people on the Post Office side were counting on by dragging it out for so long. That time and expense would force these poor people to give up, and inevitably politicians would have done so too.
Sunak's: "Obviously it's something that happened a very long time ago in the 90s" is patently a lie.
Correct me if I'm wrong but Horizon roll-out started in 2000, and the erroneous, vindictive, and possibly fraudulent prosecutions were all in the 2000s.
It seems to me Sunak is increasingly just making things up as he goes.
The “1800s” can now mean any time in the 19th century. So how do you specify the decade 1800-1810? You can’t. It’s a loss of meaning and precision
I hate the young, not just coz I’m obviously a bitter old git, but also because the young really are dim, and getting dimmer
I've read quite a lot of literature written as late as the 1960s referring to 'the gay 90s' of the 19th century, which was still within living memory for many.
The major Birmingham University global survey on attitude to religion throws up some interesting stuff.
Of the countries surveyed (UK, USA, Argentina, Australia, Canada, Spain), Germany had the fewest identifying as religious or spiritual, and also the fewest saying that their "religious, spiritual or non-religious position" is "important to who you are and how you view the world". The latter score being highest in the US and Argentina, but even in the US, only 59%.
In the UK, Canada, Australia and (interestingly) Spain, the breakdown of responses to this question were pretty similar, with "important" percentages of 32-36% and "not important" of 42-46%.
For the converse question, how important is "science" to the same, Spain comes out highest at 71%. Who knew the Spanish were so scientific? Equally surprising, the UK came in second lowest (after the Germans) at 52%, behind even the US where 24% claim to be creationists (12% in UK, 7% in Germany, 6% Spain).
The responses to the latter question correlate strongly with level of education.
Asked whether religion has more negative consequences for society than positive, in all countries except the US, more people said negative, with negative achieving a majority (50%) in the UK, Germany & Canada (51%), Spain (54%) and Australia (56%). Argentina was lower at 37% but with "positive" coming in lower still at 31%.
For the same question about science, in all countries there are significant majorities for seeing science as positve with again Spain leading the way at 74% (negative 10%), and again the US (53%, negative 26%) and Argentina (46%, negative 20%) at the other end. The proportions agreeing are higher for those identifying as non-religious/spiritual, but the pluralities remain among the religious respondents. Again, a positive view of science correlates strongly with level of education.
The responses to how reliable people find a range of scientific and spiritual 'experts' broadly reflects the above, with medical practitioners leading the way in all countries as being seen as most reliable. An interesting counter-finding is that Argentinians, despite being more religious on most survey quesions, nevertheless had a lower (23%) proportion who see religious leaders as reliable sources of information.
Generally, younger people found experts more reliable across all countries and types of expert (both scientific and religious) than older people.
A rather restricted survey given it only surveyed a few increasingly secular western nations, declining as a share of the global population when a comfortable majority of the global population overall by contrast remains religious.
Of course science has produced the nuclear bomb which it only takes a meltdown from the likes of Putin or Trump to destroy us all, plus bombs and guns which kill regularly and who knows what AI could lead to if it replaces lots of jobs and we can't control it (as well as the great positives of improved technology and medicine science has produced).
Much of our greatest architecture and art comes from religion, many of our schools and hospitals have religious origins too and foodbanks and homeless shelters etc are also often provided by religious bodies
It is clear that Davey did look into the allegations, but that the PO and Fujitsu insisted that the Horizon system didn't allow remote access and logged each entry in a separate file down to each keystroke.
We know that now not to be true, but that is Fujitsu's fault and untruth.
I think that's an answer to a different question - key presses have nothing to do with database transactions but it's unfair to expect none technical people to pick up the issue.
So Davey isn't at fault and at best Fujitsu carefully answered the question asked and not the question that was meant.
In reality I'm being very generous to Fujitsu there - they carefully answered a different question to the one that was being asked.
Saying a computer system is "robust" is meaningless. What does "robust" mean? Robust for what?
"Robust" is a word carefully chosen to mean, for the speaker, that the system runs and doesn't crash or collapse, yet to the listener, convey the impression it means "accurate".
Yes - but how daft must you be not to realise that. As I said, a lack of curiosity is very common in scandals, at least the ones I've been involved in.
An obvious, but missed, question for the Select Committee, despite Zahawi's bravura performance at the actual committee and risble acting in the drama, was to push back on what 'robust' actually meant. And those were our champion inquisitors, hand-picked for the job from a cast of millions.
And incidentally on the same point, while there were clearly some programming errors that led to mistakes in relatively rare circumstances, these were items that appeared on the lengthy bug lists that Fujitsu were collecting, and tended to be resolved as quickly as they could deal with them. The most likely explanation that has emerged so far as to why” so many discrepancies continued to appear over such an extended timescale is that they were caused by power outages (maybe of just a second or two) or poor connectivity, the sub post offices being particularly vulnerable because so many of them are in remote locations or operating out of inadequate premises. Such that the transaction made in the SPSO either wasn’t replicated at the server or got corrupted during transmission.
Sometimes, but not always, changing or repairing the kit or its wiring in the SPSO made the problems go away (or, alternatively, created problems where there had been none before).
This also explains why the majority of offices had no issues (which wouldn’t be the case with a major programming bug, which would of course affect everybody, depending on the spread of their transactions).
Whether such a system that couldn’t cope with (or even had, in the first place) unreliable power supply and connectivity, can reasonably be described as “robust”, is a good question?
There were some fundamental coding flaws as well - one mentioned in Wallis’s book was that some of the numerical codes transmitted across the system contained multiple bits of information that were run together, where the different codes being used not always had the same number of digits. Such that the items 123 45678 and 1234 5678 would both go across as 12345678. This created a rare error if the alternative ‘read’ of the code matched up with another ‘correct’ set of codes, and as an amateur looks like incredibly amateurish coding to me. As indeed the whistleblower from inside Fujitsu described.
That really isn't an excuse though - transactions across distributed systems was a common issue back in the 1990's with known implementation patterns to solve those issues.
It does sound as if Fujitsu had a bunch of programming cowboys who were learning as they went along, deployed onto one of the biggest IT projects in the world...
Not long before launch they brought in some experts to take a look at the program, given the problems they were having getting it ready, and one of them has given evidence that he told them that the accounting modules at the very heart of it were a mess, patched up into oblivion, and that really they should re-code it from scratch.
But, already suffering penalties for contractual overrun, instead they decided to continue patching and launch it hoping for the best...and the rest is history
Refactoring is painful but at times it's unavoidable.
and it's not as if a double book account keeping is difficult it's 4 steps that either need to all succeed or your things back
1) update balance account 1 2) update balance account 2 3) add transaction to account 1's list of transactions 4) add transaction to account 2's list of transactions
And all this is done at 1 central point because otherwise you have problems - it's why all the historic banks have mainframes...
Mind you I don't thnk they were the only people with problems - I've heard multiple stories of banks insisting on people starting from an empty base every time (resulting in the wheel being invented 50 times with 50 variants all with different bugs).
It started back then, but it is still going on and has only recently begun to be addressed seriously.
Somebody briefed him very, very badly.
Yup. With arguably the most inexcusable bits - when they knew something was badly wrong but were denying and obfuscating, during the coalition and Cameron years. Not that specific politicians bear direct responsibility.
No one escapes blame, but "it was a long time ago" is precisely the wrong response given it's in large part what the worst people on the Post Office side were counting on by dragging it out for so long. That time and expense would force these poor people to give up, and inevitably politicians would have done so too.
Sunak's: "Obviously it's something that happened a very long time ago in the 90s" is patently a lie.
Correct me if I'm wrong but Horizon roll-out started in 2000, and the erroneous, vindictive, and possibly fraudulent prosecutions were all in the 2000s.
It seems to me Sunak is increasingly just making things up as he goes.
I think you would need to demonstrate that he is making more things up now than he did previously.
It started back then, but it is still going on and has only recently begun to be addressed seriously.
Somebody briefed him very, very badly.
Yup. With arguably the most inexcusable bits - when they knew something was badly wrong but were denying and obfuscating, during the coalition and Cameron years. Not that specific politicians bear direct responsibility.
No one escapes blame, but "it was a long time ago" is precisely the wrong response given it's in large part what the worst people on the Post Office side were counting on by dragging it out for so long. That time and expense would force these poor people to give up, and inevitably politicians would have done so too.
I would just comment that no amount of compensation can address the serious mental health issues, including PTSD, suffered by many nor of course those who committed suicide and the ones who have died
Exactly and much of that was exacerbated by the fact it was dragged out for so long.
What I was getting at is that the initial failures, overzealous prosecutions were one thing and bad enough. But if the PO had fessed up when it was fairly clear there were problems much less damage would have been done, fewer lives damaged and less badly.
It is precisely the fact that it was "so long ago" that makes the injustice so egregious, and a big part of that, and arguably the meat of what makes the scandal so bad, was the period in the 2010s when it was clear something was badly wrong but the PO was still insisting Horizon was fine and, remarkably, still relying on its data to prosecute people.
A dreadful thing to go through still. But if it had been rectified when it should have been, many of these people would have been able to get on with their lives much sooner. It would also have cost the PO and therefore taxpayer far less!
Sunak was poor on Kunnessberg on BBC this morning then on Sky Starmer was uninspiring
For the first time in my near 80 years I am politically homeless and am certain I am not alone
I will not join any political party again and frankly have no confidence we have any prospect of addressing our country's deep seated problems with the current politicians on offer
Don't want to go all Brecht here, but isn't the bigger problem, what the British electorate will vote for?
We've spent decades voting to get more and pay less, filling the gap by selling stuff off (yes, I am looking at you Margaret) and borrowing unsustainably (what's that Gordon? Actually, I do mean you) and sweating assets beyond their limits (in case you were feeling left out George).
There's no way out of this that doesn't involve quite a bit less consumption, quite a bit more tax (especially on the gains people have made through asset inflation) and a redirection of spending to investment for the future.
But if an election comes down to "accept the hangover" vs. "hair of the dog", the second will always win, no matter how persuasive the leader of the first is.
SFAICS this became absolutely acute at the point where the 1992 election was lost by Labour partly on account of saying something which allowed the 'Labour' Tax Bombshell' campaign. We have never recovered. This is 32 years ago.
No party aiming at government (there are only 2) is going to risk this, so we are stuck with the ludicrous strangulation of real discussion about debt, tax, spend, borrow at election time.
I can see only two ways out, neither of which are likely. A voter revolt, or a cross party truce to agree a common formula like 'Both Tory and Labour will tax at the level which will meet our spending commitments. Taxes can go up as well as down. Taxes are high because state managed expenditure is nearly 50% of GDP. Get over it'.
There's one other way, which also has a lot wrong with it.
Say as little as possible pre-election. Then having won, say "My predecessor left things in an even worse state then we thought." Go in hard with the painful stuff, and hope that it's worked in five years.
Horribly dishonest, but possibly better than we deserve.
It started back then, but it is still going on and has only recently begun to be addressed seriously.
Somebody briefed him very, very badly.
Yup. With arguably the most inexcusable bits - when they knew something was badly wrong but were denying and obfuscating, during the coalition and Cameron years. Not that specific politicians bear direct responsibility.
No one escapes blame, but "it was a long time ago" is precisely the wrong response given it's in large part what the worst people on the Post Office side were counting on by dragging it out for so long. That time and expense would force these poor people to give up, and inevitably politicians would have done so too.
I would just comment that no amount of compensation can address the serious mental health issues, including PTSD, suffered by many nor of course those who committed suicide and the ones who have died
No amount of money can compensate the suffering that some went through and will always endure, but one thing that will definitely help is if the truth comes out fully, and without further delay.
One thing the Government could and should do, immediately, and without cost to the the taxpayer, is tell the current Board of the Post Office to stop delaying proceedings and give the maximum and most urgent assistance to the Inquiry in its work.
Anyone who has been watching the Inquiry will know that thus far the PO has done everything in its power to obstruct the unearthing of the whole truth.
The major Birmingham University global survey on attitude to religion throws up some interesting stuff.
Of the countries surveyed (UK, USA, Argentina, Australia, Canada, Spain), Germany had the fewest identifying as religious or spiritual, and also the fewest saying that their "religious, spiritual or non-religious position" is "important to who you are and how you view the world". The latter score being highest in the US and Argentina, but even in the US, only 59%.
In the UK, Canada, Australia and (interestingly) Spain, the breakdown of responses to this question were pretty similar, with "important" percentages of 32-36% and "not important" of 42-46%.
For the converse question, how important is "science" to the same, Spain comes out highest at 71%. Who knew the Spanish were so scientific? Equally surprising, the UK came in second lowest (after the Germans) at 52%, behind even the US where 24% claim to be creationists (12% in UK, 7% in Germany, 6% Spain).
The responses to the latter question correlate strongly with level of education.
Asked whether religion has more negative consequences for society than positive, in all countries except the US, more people said negative, with negative achieving a majority (50%) in the UK, Germany & Canada (51%), Spain (54%) and Australia (56%). Argentina was lower at 37% but with "positive" coming in lower still at 31%.
For the same question about science, in all countries there are significant majorities for seeing science as positve with again Spain leading the way at 74% (negative 10%), and again the US (53%, negative 26%) and Argentina (46%, negative 20%) at the other end. The proportions agreeing are higher for those identifying as non-religious/spiritual, but the pluralities remain among the religious respondents. Again, a positive view of science correlates strongly with level of education.
The responses to how reliable people find a range of scientific and spiritual 'experts' broadly reflects the above, with medical practitioners leading the way in all countries as being seen as most reliable. An interesting counter-finding is that Argentinians, despite being more religious on most survey quesions, nevertheless had a lower (23%) proportion who see religious leaders as reliable sources of information.
Generally, younger people found experts more reliable across all countries and types of expert (both scientific and religious) than older people.
A rather restricted survey given it only surveyed a few increasingly secular western nations and a comfortable majority of the global population by contrast remains religious.
Of course science has produced the nuclear bomb which it only takes a meltdown from the likes of Putin or Trump to destroy us all, plus bombs and guns which kill regularly and who knows what AI could lead to if it replaces lots of jobs and we can't control it (as well as the great positives of improved technology and medicine science has produced).
Much of our greatest architecture and art comes from religion, many of our schools and hospitals have religious origins too and foodbanks and homeless shelters etc are also often provided by religious bodies
Surely if you're religious the only thing that matters is whether it's true?
You surely don't believe the existence of God is determined by the results of YouGov surveys, in the same way as the future existence of the Tory party?
In short: Russia has been allowed to determine the rules of play The west has focused on doing just enough but no more Fear of escalation only emboldens Putin to go further We have hoped for the best and not prepared for the worst*
*This is a little unclear as at times it appears as if some in the west really do fear a Russian defeat. Others appeared to hope that with enough weapons to Ukraine Russian morale would capitulate.
The UK comes out of that piece quite well but I wonder what our next step is going to be. We need to be identifying weapon systems that we can provide in meaningful quantities that Ukraine is likely to find helpful. And ammunition of course, as much ammunition as we can make.
The major Birmingham University global survey on attitude to religion throws up some interesting stuff.
Of the countries surveyed (UK, USA, Argentina, Australia, Canada, Spain), Germany had the fewest identifying as religious or spiritual, and also the fewest saying that their "religious, spiritual or non-religious position" is "important to who you are and how you view the world". The latter score being highest in the US and Argentina, but even in the US, only 59%.
In the UK, Canada, Australia and (interestingly) Spain, the breakdown of responses to this question were pretty similar, with "important" percentages of 32-36% and "not important" of 42-46%.
For the converse question, how important is "science" to the same, Spain comes out highest at 71%. Who knew the Spanish were so scientific? Equally surprising, the UK came in second lowest (after the Germans) at 52%, behind even the US where 24% claim to be creationists (12% in UK, 7% in Germany, 6% Spain).
The responses to the latter question correlate strongly with level of education.
Asked whether religion has more negative consequences for society than positive, in all countries except the US, more people said negative, with negative achieving a majority (50%) in the UK, Germany & Canada (51%), Spain (54%) and Australia (56%). Argentina was lower at 37% but with "positive" coming in lower still at 31%.
For the same question about science, in all countries there are significant majorities for seeing science as positve with again Spain leading the way at 74% (negative 10%), and again the US (53%, negative 26%) and Argentina (46%, negative 20%) at the other end. The proportions agreeing are higher for those identifying as non-religious/spiritual, but the pluralities remain among the religious respondents. Again, a positive view of science correlates strongly with level of education.
The responses to how reliable people find a range of scientific and spiritual 'experts' broadly reflects the above, with medical practitioners leading the way in all countries as being seen as most reliable. An interesting counter-finding is that Argentinians, despite being more religious on most survey quesions, nevertheless had a lower (23%) proportion who see religious leaders as reliable sources of information.
Generally, younger people found experts more reliable across all countries and types of expert (both scientific and religious) than older people.
A rather restricted survey given it only surveyed a few increasingly secular western nations and a comfortable majority of the global population by contrast remains religious.
Of course science has produced the nuclear bomb which it only takes a meltdown from the likes of Putin or Trump to destroy us all, plus bombs and guns which kill regularly and who knows what AI could lead to if it replaces lots of jobs and we can't control it (as well as the great positives of improved technology and medicine science has produced).
Much of our greatest architecture and art comes from religion, many of our schools and hospitals have religious origins too and foodbanks and homeless shelters etc are also often provided by religious bodies
Surely if you're religious the only thing that matters is whether it's true?
You surely don't believe the existence of God is determined by the results of YouGov surveys, in the same way as the future existence of the Tory party?
Well yes, in the sense if God exists even if you are the only believer who follows the Bible fervently left on earth you are also the only one left certain to go to heaven
It is clear that Davey did look into the allegations, but that the PO and Fujitsu insisted that the Horizon system didn't allow remote access and logged each entry in a separate file down to each keystroke.
We know that now not to be true, but that is Fujitsu's fault and untruth.
I think that's an answer to a different question - key presses have nothing to do with database transactions but it's unfair to expect none technical people to pick up the issue.
So Davey isn't at fault and at best Fujitsu carefully answered the question asked and not the question that was meant.
In reality I'm being very generous to Fujitsu there - they carefully answered a different question to the one that was being asked.
Saying a computer system is "robust" is meaningless. What does "robust" mean? Robust for what?
"Robust" is a word carefully chosen to mean, for the speaker, that the system runs and doesn't crash or collapse, yet to the listener, convey the impression it means "accurate".
Yes - but how daft must you be not to realise that. As I said, a lack of curiosity is very common in scandals, at least the ones I've been involved in.
An obvious, but missed, question for the Select Committee, despite Zahawi's bravura performance at the actual committee and risble acting in the drama, was to push back on what 'robust' actually meant. And those were our champion inquisitors, hand-picked for the job from a cast of millions.
And incidentally on the same point, while there were clearly some programming errors that led to mistakes in relatively rare circumstances, these were items that appeared on the lengthy bug lists that Fujitsu were collecting, and tended to be resolved as quickly as they could deal with them. The most likely explanation that has emerged so far as to why” so many discrepancies continued to appear over such an extended timescale is that they were caused by power outages (maybe of just a second or two) or poor connectivity, the sub post offices being particularly vulnerable because so many of them are in remote locations or operating out of inadequate premises. Such that the transaction made in the SPSO either wasn’t replicated at the server or got corrupted during transmission.
Sometimes, but not always, changing or repairing the kit or its wiring in the SPSO made the problems go away (or, alternatively, created problems where there had been none before).
This also explains why the majority of offices had no issues (which wouldn’t be the case with a major programming bug, which would of course affect everybody, depending on the spread of their transactions).
Whether such a system that couldn’t cope with (or even had, in the first place) unreliable power supply and connectivity, can reasonably be described as “robust”, is a good question?
There were some fundamental coding flaws as well - one mentioned in Wallis’s book was that some of the numerical codes transmitted across the system contained multiple bits of information that were run together, where the different codes being used not always had the same number of digits. Such that the items 123 45678 and 1234 5678 would both go across as 12345678. This created a rare error if the alternative ‘read’ of the code matched up with another ‘correct’ set of codes, and as an amateur looks like incredibly amateurish coding to me. As indeed the whistleblower from inside Fujitsu described.
That really isn't an excuse though - transactions across distributed systems was a common issue back in the 1990's with known implementation patterns to solve those issues.
It does sound as if Fujitsu had a bunch of programming cowboys who were learning as they went along, deployed onto one of the biggest IT projects in the world...
Not long before launch they brought in some experts to take a look at the program, given the problems they were having getting it ready, and one of them has given evidence that he told them that the accounting modules at the very heart of it were a mess, patched up into oblivion, and that really they should re-code it from scratch.
But, already suffering penalties for contractual overrun, instead they decided to continue patching and launch it hoping for the best...and the rest is history
Refactoring is painful but at times it's unavoidable.
and it's not as if a double book account keeping is difficult it's 4 steps that either need to all succeed or your things back
1) update balance account 1 2) update balance account 2 3) add transaction to account 1's list of transactions 4) add transaction to account 2's list of transactions
And all this is done at 1 central point because otherwise you have problems - it's why all the historic banks have mainframes...
Mind you I don't thnk they were the only people with problems - I've heard multiple stories of banks insisting on people starting from an empty base every time (resulting in the wheel being invented 50 times with 50 variants all with different bugs).
A key point to add to your 4 steps is to checkpoint at the start and end of the set of 4 steps so that, if any step fails you automatically roll-back to the checkpoint position.
Sunak was poor on Kunnessberg on BBC this morning then on Sky Starmer was uninspiring
For the first time in my near 80 years I am politically homeless and am certain I am not alone
I will not join any political party again and frankly have no confidence we have any prospect of addressing our country's deep seated problems with the current politicians on offer
Don't want to go all Brecht here, but isn't the bigger problem, what the British electorate will vote for?
We've spent decades voting to get more and pay less, filling the gap by selling stuff off (yes, I am looking at you Margaret) and borrowing unsustainably (what's that Gordon? Actually, I do mean you) and sweating assets beyond their limits (in case you were feeling left out George).
There's no way out of this that doesn't involve quite a bit less consumption, quite a bit more tax (especially on the gains people have made through asset inflation) and a redirection of spending to investment for the future.
But if an election comes down to "accept the hangover" vs. "hair of the dog", the second will always win, no matter how persuasive the leader of the first is.
SFAICS this became absolutely acute at the point where the 1992 election was lost by Labour partly on account of saying something which allowed the 'Labour' Tax Bombshell' campaign. We have never recovered. This is 32 years ago.
No party aiming at government (there are only 2) is going to risk this, so we are stuck with the ludicrous strangulation of real discussion about debt, tax, spend, borrow at election time.
I can see only two ways out, neither of which are likely. A voter revolt, or a cross party truce to agree a common formula like 'Both Tory and Labour will tax at the level which will meet our spending commitments. Taxes can go up as well as down. Taxes are high because state managed expenditure is nearly 50% of GDP. Get over it'.
There's one other way, which also has a lot wrong with it.
Say as little as possible pre-election. Then having won, say "My predecessor left things in an even worse state then we thought." Go in hard with the painful stuff, and hope that it's worked in five years.
Horribly dishonest, but possibly better than we deserve.
The other approach is 1 I gave earlier today - but as you say doesn't work.
All the current tax cuts are based on spending cuts being made down the line - what Labour would need to do is to say you've created £xbn of spending cuts - where are they and then drill down to show that they don't exist.
But as we see with Leon and the Post Office Scandal (not a dig a Leon, just using him as an example) people don't have the attention span to allow you to do that. So it's better to keep quiet because otherwise you end up with half stories that make less sense and play worse than keeping quiet and avoiding the topic.
Comments
1. Umberto Eco's 14 points. Nah. Fascism has to erase the line between state violence and non-state violence. It ditches the rechtsstaat. Ignoring that feature is hopeless.
2. Much of the discourse is stuck in the past. The thing today is technofascism. See smartphones and Neuralink and I could go on. See China in particular as the world's leading country in this regard.
3. On question 3 of the sweepstake, does anyone have someone who isn't Yousaf as the SNP leader when the GE is called? Brian Souter (who is homophobic) switching his backing to Kate Forbes when he realises Yousaf is finished would be interesting. It would be a dollshouse version of Elon Musk backing RFKJr.
A notable exception to ministerial continuity being the Post Office responsibility, and we see now how that is part of why it dragged on so long.
The other problem is when you look at the projects I mentioned above all of them are self contained projects at maximum 2 junctions, a tunnel, a station and some track.
But the cost of Euston is because it's actually multiple different projects: - it's rebuild the underground (a project that was previously attached to CrossRail 2) connect Euston Square to euston (again an TfL / Crossrail 2 project) and add 10 400m long platforms in an area of very expensive real estate.
Now the reality is that every part of that is required for HS2 when it's fully finished but all those projects could be being done separately - it's just in the UK they are all attached to the total HS2 pot where elsewhere in the world a large part of them would be in a separate "Make Euston the Gateway to the UK" project.
As an occasional scribbler for the Gazette, I am now compelled by this, not coz I newly care about subpostmasters, but because i am fascinated to see how the scriptwriter of this ITV show took such a complex and yawning story and made it morally urgent and national news. Because he or see has clearly done a superb job, and will surely win prizes
After watching it I hope and expect to be as passionate as you about this. Well, nearly
Still, it just about beats London in January I suppose.
Mr. Trump, Ms. Haley and Ron DeSantis fanned out across Iowa this weekend to make their case before the state’s caucuses on Jan. 15 in a frenetic burst of activity as voters endured an unending barrage of mailers, TV ads and door knockers.
NY Times
You’ll be pleased to hear the pollution is way down this winter, so far. Perhaps they have stopped burning rice fields in the provinces (which causes the smog you can get at this time of year)
The key to enjoying Bangkok is to pick your area, and never leave it. Never get in a taxi (apart from to and from the airport). Never get into traffic. Choose somewhere with loads of nice restaurants, hotels, shops, open air beer bars, everything within a ten minute walk (and there are several of these areas) and then stay there. Then it is blissfully relaxed
if you have to move around a lot it is grim
Of course, if one believes that there is little in the UK north of Watford, never mind Watford Gap, it follows logically.
But some of us in Scotland would have liked to be able to travel to the rest of Europe at high speed, preferably bypassing London completely.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-politics-67890460
Under the SNP you will never get the bustling economy, pray that global warming gives you a bigger population
She also adapted Vanity Fair for ITV a few years ago and did it really well, I thought. Plus Honour - about the "honour"-based murder of an Asian girl. She seems to specialise in turning real-life cases into dramas to make them come alive.
Maybe I'll see you in some bar or restaurant or something.
And if you overhear a Thatcherite comment in an English accent, it's probably me.
I am the Official PB Shoe-horn-master General, and Lord Lieutenant of the Honourable Company of Thread-Hijackers; as such I acknowledge a fellow member of the Guild
Stay around Sois 2 to 22 on Sukhumvit Road, or in the old Patpong (if you like trendy gay areas). They have all you need
You may actually see me in the airport tomorrow: I am flying to my new favourite city for a Gazette assignment: Phnom Penh
Speaking of which, the Thai islands are very nice, but a little overdeveloped these days? Try Cambodia
Of course, anyone who has followed the story in any detail can see the many corners they had to cut and things they skipped or glossed over, particularly over the legal twists and turns, and there are some critical events and issues from the court case that flashed by in seconds and you might miss the reference if you weren't already expecting it. But I thought it conveyed the story incredible well in the time available. Really the only major point that didn't quite work was the sudden leap from Bates worrying that the campaign had run out of legal funding, when the PO started kicking up after the verdict, and his equally sudden victory - the financing of which not explained - seconds later.
Having read Wallis's book, which has a lot of detail in it both personal and technical, but is nevertheless written in a readable and accessible style by clearly a talented journalist, must have helped the drama producers along, in terms of how to relate the story.
https://amp.theguardian.com/politics/2024/jan/07/spanish-woman-deported-from-uk-after-returning-from-christmas-holiday#amp_tf=From %1$s&aoh=17046267973681&referrer=https://www.google.com
Prima facie it does seem like the writer has done an excellent job. It has changed the national conversation. Few TV programmes do that
i remember my parents going on about a TV docu called “Cathy Comes Home”, which apparently did the same for homelessness back in the day (I’m not quite old enough to have seen it)
Should be 'shithole Scotland' in any case.
For the first time in my near 80 years I am politically homeless and am certain I am not alone
I will not join any political party again and frankly have no confidence we have any prospect of addressing our country's deep seated problems with the current politicians on offer
Sometimes, but not always, changing or repairing the kit or its wiring in the SPSO made the problems go away (or, alternatively, created problems where there had been none before).
This also explains why the majority of offices had no issues (which wouldn’t be the case with a major programming bug, which would of course affect everybody, depending on the spread of their transactions).
Whether such a system that couldn’t cope with (or even had, in the first place) unreliable power supply and connectivity, can reasonably be described as “robust”, is a good question?
There were some fundamental coding flaws as well - one mentioned in Wallis’s book was that some of the numerical codes transmitted across the system contained multiple bits of information that were run together, where the different codes being used not always had the same number of digits. Such that the items 123 45678 and 1234 5678 would both go across as 12345678. This created a rare error if the alternative ‘read’ of the code matched up with another ‘correct’ set of codes, and as an amateur looks like incredibly amateurish coding to me. As indeed the whistleblower from inside Fujitsu described.
Stunning mountain ranges
Hillwalking in M&S shirts and ancient canvas packs
Village Halls
British Bake Off tribute act
Union Flags everywhere
The Queen, weirdly as the adversary
Small, stubborn man with heart of gold
Battling cancer but not making a fuss
Incredibly posh Tory (but, as we all secretly hope, a decent chap)
The White Witch (Narnia)
Love Actually/Paddington style multi-culturalism
Outrageous miscarriage of justice
CAMRA (How many pints did he get through?!)
Evil Corporation (with a funny forren name)
Lawyers in pinstripes
It's genius.
Ok, let's get back to your hilarious if repetitive patter about the Truss comeback.
Sorry, that should be 'hilarious'.
Alan Bates lives nearby and his portrayal, and others, was perfect and jail time must beckon for some
And it certainly showed how beautiful Llandudno and Eryri are but then I would say that as this is where we live
The “1800s” can now mean any time in the 19th century. So how do you specify the decade 1800-1810? You can’t. It’s a loss of meaning and precision
I hate the young, not just coz I’m obviously a bitter old git, but also because the young really are dim, and getting dimmer
The problem is his viewpoints include views that deem him unacceptable - plus he had a habit (as with many others) of insisting on free speech only up to the point they hear something they don't like at which point they do everything they can to avoid hearing opinions that they don't like.
Indeed the infamous "you're the only one having problems" might just possibly have started out as "we can't see this issue at HQ"..
But of course the programming was also crap, and Fujitsu for one knew that all along.
We've spent decades voting to get more and pay less, filling the gap by selling stuff off (yes, I am looking at you Margaret) and borrowing unsustainably (what's that Gordon? Actually, I do mean you) and sweating assets beyond their limits (in case you were feeling left out George).
There's no way out of this that doesn't involve quite a bit less consumption, quite a bit more tax (especially on the gains people have made through asset inflation) and a redirection of spending to investment for the future.
But if an election comes down to "accept the hangover" vs. "hair of the dog", the second will always win, no matter how persuasive the leader of the first is.
https://uk.yahoo.com/news/opinion-another-plan-stop-putin-105402840.html
In short:
Russia has been allowed to determine the rules of play
The west has focused on doing just enough but no more
Fear of escalation only emboldens Putin to go further
We have hoped for the best and not prepared for the worst*
*This is a little unclear as at times it appears as if some in the west really do fear a Russian defeat. Others appeared to hope that with enough weapons to Ukraine Russian morale would capitulate.
I think it’s helpful to view political allegiance a bit like tax residency and domicile.
As a taxpayer you are resident in a particular jurisdiction. That’s your current affiliation. But you may be domiciled elsewhere - where your true heart it. Where you would want to be buried. And you may also travel around outside your current location for particular elections, as a short term business visitor.
I would describe myself as domiciled and resident in the Lib Dems (some sort of Ashdownesque pragmatic version, not Orange Book, not SDP). Many on here are domiciled in the Tories but currently resident in the LDs or Labour, and some others might be Labour domiciled but on a secondment to the greens.
If you don’t feel currently resident anywhere, then treat it as an extended cruise in international waters where you get to moor in various harbours and look around the neighbourhood at election time.
Alan Bates ran the post office here in Llandudno and a SPM from Anglesey was jailed
The usefulness of words of often simply so that we can understand and identify without any special overtones. 'Table' and 'cow' are examples.
'Fascist' is not such a word, nor are many political labels. 'Fascist' is protean, and its use is mostly a sort of game of ensuring you are not called one while others are.
I and lots of others however use the word 'fascistic' about the tendencies of Trump. This is because of reasons, of which three are quite special.
Firstly he uses intimidation threat and violence, secondly, and linked, he will not accept any result about anything unless he wins, and thirdly further linked, all language is used as a servant of his interests and not truth. The use of lies unceasingly - the big and constant lie - has a long and distinguished fascist history.
Other descriptions are available but fascistic will do.
No-one in the UK remotely resembles this. Not even the SNP or our UK government. Being useless and horrible is very different. We should be grateful for small mercies.
There's an article in a newspaper today of a woman pleading guilty to a crime she didnt commit rather than return to jail risk being raped/assaulted by men who have somehow persuaded prison authorities they should be housed in a woman's prison.
It started back then, but it is still going on and has only recently begun to be addressed seriously.
Somebody briefed him very, very badly.
If you think back to the successful issue-led Hollywood Oscar-bait of the 90s and early 2000s, the key to them was a compelling and unusual central character taking on a corporate goliath against seemingly impossible odds. Think Erin Brockovich or Jeffrey Wigand.
Bates, Jo Hamilton, and to some extent the others are similarly set up. There's just something first horrifying, and then to some extent emotionally satisfying when they start to win, to have these incredibly British, unobtrusive, everyman (and woman) characters caught in a nightmare and then refusing to be defeated.
Can't his pal Elon step in?
Not long before launch they brought in some experts to take a look at the program, given the problems they were having getting it ready, and one of them has given evidence that he told them that the accounting modules at the very heart of it were a mess, patched up into oblivion, and that really they should re-code it from scratch.
But, already suffering penalties for contractual overrun, instead they decided to continue patching and launch it hoping for the best...and the rest is history
We just need to adopt sortition. Place the political decision-making process in the hands of randomly selected representatives of the electorate. Do away with professional politicians. If current politicians want to pursue a similar career to their present one, let them be advocates of one course or another, but make it crystal clear to them that they _are_ going to be advocates and not decision-makers. Their job would be to present a sufficiently cogent case for any particular course of action, that it would be convincing to the representatives of the people, who would benefit from the same advice from the civil service that is currently provided to professional politicians.
I think now that the machines will take over before there is time for this to happen, but if not - God willing - it will happen sooner or later.
No one escapes blame, but "it was a long time ago" is precisely the wrong response given it's in large part what the worst people on the Post Office side were counting on by dragging it out for so long. That time and expense would force these poor people to give up, and inevitably politicians would have done so too.
No party aiming at government (there are only 2) is going to risk this, so we are stuck with the ludicrous strangulation of real discussion about debt, tax, spend, borrow at election time.
I can see only two ways out, neither of which are likely. A voter revolt, or a cross party truce to agree a common formula like 'Both Tory and Labour will tax at the level which will meet our spending commitments. Taxes can go up as well as down. Taxes are high because state managed expenditure is nearly 50% of GDP. Get over it'.
I suppose there is no way the guilty ones could have their Post Office Pensions blocked?
When he grew up, I'll leave to the rapier wits assembled here.
Correct me if I'm wrong but Horizon roll-out started in 2000, and the erroneous, vindictive, and possibly fraudulent prosecutions were all in the 2000s.
It seems to me Sunak is increasingly just making things up as he goes.
It was one of the few light moment in this solemn affair. Even the po-faced KC, Jason Beer, was seen to crack a smile.
A rather restricted survey given it only surveyed a few increasingly secular western nations, declining as a share of the global population when a comfortable majority of the global population overall by contrast remains religious.
Of course science has produced the nuclear bomb which it only takes a meltdown from the likes of Putin or Trump to destroy us all, plus bombs and guns which kill regularly and who knows what AI could lead to if it replaces lots of jobs and we can't control it (as well as the great positives of improved technology and medicine science has produced).
Much of our greatest architecture and art comes from religion, many of our schools and hospitals have religious origins too and foodbanks and homeless shelters etc are also often provided by religious bodies
and it's not as if a double book account keeping is difficult it's 4 steps that either need to all succeed or your things back
1) update balance account 1
2) update balance account 2
3) add transaction to account 1's list of transactions
4) add transaction to account 2's list of transactions
And all this is done at 1 central point because otherwise you have problems - it's why all the historic banks have mainframes...
Mind you I don't thnk they were the only people with problems - I've heard multiple stories of banks insisting on people starting from an empty base every time (resulting in the wheel being invented 50 times with 50 variants all with different bugs).
What I was getting at is that the initial failures, overzealous prosecutions were one thing and bad enough. But if the PO had fessed up when it was fairly clear there were problems much less damage would have been done, fewer lives damaged and less badly.
It is precisely the fact that it was "so long ago" that makes the injustice so egregious, and a big part of that, and arguably the meat of what makes the scandal so bad, was the period in the 2010s when it was clear something was badly wrong but the PO was still insisting Horizon was fine and, remarkably, still relying on its data to prosecute people.
A dreadful thing to go through still. But if it had been rectified when it should have been, many of these people would have been able to get on with their lives much sooner. It would also have cost the PO and therefore taxpayer far less!
Say as little as possible pre-election. Then having won, say "My predecessor left things in an even worse state then we thought." Go in hard with the painful stuff, and hope that it's worked in five years.
Horribly dishonest, but possibly better than we deserve.
One thing the Government could and should do, immediately, and without cost to the the taxpayer, is tell the current Board of the Post Office to stop delaying proceedings and give the maximum and most urgent assistance to the Inquiry in its work.
Anyone who has been watching the Inquiry will know that thus far the PO has done everything in its power to obstruct the unearthing of the whole truth.
You surely don't believe the existence of God is determined by the results of YouGov surveys, in the same way as the future existence of the Tory party?
All the current tax cuts are based on spending cuts being made down the line - what Labour would need to do is to say you've created £xbn of spending cuts - where are they and then drill down to show that they don't exist.
But as we see with Leon and the Post Office Scandal (not a dig a Leon, just using him as an example) people don't have the attention span to allow you to do that. So it's better to keep quiet because otherwise you end up with half stories that make less sense and play worse than keeping quiet and avoiding the topic.